U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS 



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— Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue- 

ence, Technology, Engineering and Math Careers 



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OCTOBER 2010 












U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS 


MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION 


The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipar¬ 
tisan agency established by Congress in 1957. It is directed 

to: 

• Investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being 
deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, 
religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or by reason 
of fraudulent practices. 

• Study and collect information relating to discrimination or a 
denial of equal protection of the laws under the Constitution 
because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or 
national origin, or in the administration of justice. 

• Appraise federal laws and policies with respect to discrimi¬ 
nation or denial of equal protection of the laws because of 
race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or 
in the administration of justice. 

■ Serve as a national clearinghouse for information in respect 
to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws 
because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or 
national origin. 

■ Submit reports, findings, and recommendations to the 
President and Congress. 

■ Issue public service announcements to discourage 
discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws. 


Gerald A. Reynolds, Chairman 

Abigail Thernstrom, Vice Chair 

Todd Gaziano 

Gail Heriot 

Peter N. Kirsanow 

Arlan D. Melendez 

Ashley L. Taylor, Jr. 

Michael Yaki 

Martin Dannenfelser, Staff Director 


U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 
624 Ninth Street, NW 
Washington, DC 20425 

(202) 376-81 28 voice 
(202) 376-8116 TTY 

www.usccr.gov 


This report is available on disk in ASCII Text and Microsoft Word 2003 for persons with visual impairments. Please call (202) 376-8110. 



Encouraging Minority 
Students to Pursue 
Science, Technology, 

Engineering and 
Math Careers 


A Briefing Before 
The United States Commission on Civil Rights 

Held in Washington, DC 


Briefing Report 







Letter of Transmittal 


The President 

The President of the Senate 

The Speaker of the House 

Sirs and Madam: 

The United States Commission on Civil Rights (“Commission”) is pleased to transmit this report. 
Encouraging Minorities to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Careers. A 
panel of experts briefed the Commission on September 8, 2008, on possible reasons that minority 
students who begin college intending to major in science, technology, engineering or math 
(“STEM”) leave these disciplines in disproportionate numbers before graduation. They also 
discussed possible ways to improve the retention of these students in STEM degree programs. 
Based on that briefing, the Commission developed the findings and recommendations that are 
included in this report. 

The Commission found that regardless of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, college freshmen 
show equally substantial degrees of interest in STEM careers. Despite similar levels of interest, 
the Commission found that black and Hispanic students are ultimately less likely to major in or 
obtain doctoral degrees in STEM disciplines than are whites and Asians. Data presented to the 
Commission indicated that racial and ethnic discrimination in college is not a substantial factor in 
these disproportionate STEM attrition rates. It found that academic mismatch—one consequence 
of some schools’ racially and ethnically preferential admissions policies—is an important reason 
for these disparities, however. 

For example, data indicate that success in STEM majors depends both on a student’s absolute 
entering academic credentials and his or her credentials relative to other students in his or her 
classes. When black and white students have the similar academic credentials black students are 
actually more likely than their white counterparts to obtain STEM degrees. Thus, the 
Commission ascribed the higher minority 7 attrition from STEM programs to credentials gaps or 
“mismatch” stemming in part from racially preferential admissions policies. 

The Commission recommended that selective colleges not admit any STEM student with a large 
deficit in academic credentials relative to its STEM median without fully informing that student 
of the potential impact of such deficit on that student. Such disclosure should include the 
school’s record of graduating students with similar academic credentials in STEM majors. 
Similarly, the Commission urged high school guidance counselors to advise students about the 
impact of large deficits in academic credentials on success in a particular college’s STEM 
program. It further noted that well-designed academic support programs can sometimes help 
students with modest deficits in credentials to succeed in STEM programs and advised schools to 


implement the best practices employed by such programs and make admitted students aware of 
their availability. 

Part A, which consists of the body of this report, was approved on June 11, 2010 by Chairman 
Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, Kirsanow and Taylor. Vice Chair Themstrom 
abstained, and Commissioner Yaki voted against. Vote tallies for each of the Commission’s 
findings and recommendations, which make up Part B of the report, are noted therein. 















































Table of Contents 

Executive Summary.1 

Findings and Recommendations.3 

Summary of Proceedings.7 

Richard Sander. 7 

Richard Tapia.21 

Rogers Elliott.22 

Thomas Fortmann.26 

Robin Willner.27 

Discussion.29 

Statements.37 

Richard Tapia.37 

Rogers Elliott.44 

Thomas E. Fortmann.68 

Robin Willner.71 

Speaker Biographies.75 

Richard Sander.75 

Richard Tapia.75 

Rogers Elliott.75 

Thomas Fortmann.76 

Robin Willner.76 

Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals.77 

Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot.77 

Statement of Commissioner Ashley L. Taylor, Jr.93 

Dissent of Commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan D. Melendez.94 

Joint Rebuttal of Commissioners Gail Heriot, Peter Kirsanow and Todd Gaziano.96 




































Executive Summary 


1 


Executive Summary 


The Commission held a briefing entitled. “Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. 
Technology. Engineering and Math Careers." In particular, the Commission examined why 
minority college students who begin their college studies intending to major in science, 
technology, engineering or math (STEM) leave these disciplines in disproportionate numbers 
before graduation. 

Experts appearing before the Commission were Professor Richard Sander of the University 
of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Law School; Dr. Richard Tapia, Maxfield-Oshman 
Professor in Engineering at Rice University; Dr. Rogers Elliott, Professor Emeritus of 
Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College; Dr. Thomas Fortmann. 
Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; and Ms. Robin Willner, Vice 
President of Global Community Initiatives at IBM Corporation. 

Of particular interest to the Commission on this occasion was the ‘‘mismatch hypothesis.” 

The mismatch hypothesis holds that students whose academic credentials are significantly 
different from the average student in the class may leam less than they would have learned in 
a class in which their academic credentials “matched" those of the average student. Mismatch 
may be positive or negative. Students who are positively mismatched - that is, their academic 
credentials significantly exceed those of their peers - may not be sufficiently challenged by 
the material. As a result, they may become bored or disengaged. Students who are negatively 
mismatched - that is, their academic credentials are significantly below those of their peers - 
may feel overwhelmed by the speed at which difficult material is being taught. They may get 
lost - even though they could have mastered the material had it only been taught at a slower 
rate. 

Under this hypothesis, aggressive affirmative action or any admissions decision for largely 
nonacademic reasons can lead to negative mismatch for any student, including 
underrepresented minorities. 1 Well-meaning efforts to benefit these students can. if the 
mismatch hypothesis is correct, cause these students to drop out of STEM programs in 
disproportionate numbers. The result is fewer, not more, minority physicians, scientists, and 
engineers. 

o 

In this briefing, the term “mismatch” did not include the admission of students with small 
academic deficits who, with the kind of support offered by the colleges and universities they 
attend, would remain interested in STEM and able to successfully complete a program. 

There was substantial agreement among the witnesses. None disputed the evidence that 
blacks and Hispanics are at least as likely to express interest in STEM majors as whites prior 


1 The terms “minority,” "non-Asian minority.” and “underrepresented minority" refer to the same group and 
were used interchangeably by the panelists. 




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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


to attending college. None disputed the evidence that blacks and Hispanics abandon their 
STEM ambitions in greater proportions than do whites and Asians. 

Two witnesses, Dr. Sander and Dr. Elliott, each presented an empirical study that supported 
the mismatch hypothesis at the undergraduate level. None of the other witnesses disputed 
either study. Indeed, to one extent or another, they all agreed on the peril that results when a 
minority student, usually unknowingly, accepts an offer of admission at a college or 
university at which he or she is mismatched. All the witnesses agreed that prospective 
students should be informed that his or her academic credentials are substantially below the 
average at a particular school. Students could then make an informed decision about which 
school to attend. 

No one took the position that the elimination of mismatch in admissions would eliminate the 
disparities in average STEM credentials upon completion of high school between black and 
Hispanics students on the one hand and white and Asian students on the other. Mismatch is 
simply a piece of the puzzle at the college level. 

Rather than highlight mismatch, Dr. Fortmann emphasized the difficulty of attracting 
competent STEM teachers to K-12 schools, which he blamed for inadequate college 
preparation. Dr. Tapia conceded that the data on mismatch presented by Dr. Sander and Dr. 
Elliott “are entirely credible to me because they reflect what I have seen at Rice.” While he 
stated that he did “not dispute the data,” he took issue with what he perceived to be the 
conclusions they drew from it and advocated instead strong support and mentoring programs 
at the graduate level. He emphasized the need for “an equitable presence” of minorities at top 
research university graduate programs in STEM, where minority faculty members can serve 
as both role models and mentors. 

Ms. Willner discussed a report entitled, “Out Before the Game Begins: Hispanic Leaders 
Talk About What’s Needed to Bring More Hispanic Youngsters into Science, Technology 
and Math Professions,” sponsored by IBM. 

Based on this testimony, the Commission made the following findings and recommendations: 
(Please see next page). 



Findings and Recommendations 


3 


Findings and Recommendations 


Findings 


1. ) Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates are important to 
the U.S. economy because they enable the United States to maintain its preeminence in 
STEM fields. [Approved (7-0): Chairman Reynolds, Vice Chair Themstrom. Commissioners 
Gaziano, Heriot. Kirsanow. Taylor, and Yaki voted in favor.] 

2. ) Black and Hispanic high school seniors exhibit about the same degree of interest in 
pursuing STEM careers as white students (Asian students are still more interested). But 
despite these initially high levels of interest, black and Hispanic students are less likely to 
major in or obtain a doctoral degree in STEM disciplines than are whites and Asians. 
[Approved 4-2-1: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano. Heriot, and Kirsanow 
voted in favor: Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioner Yaki voted against; Commissioner 
Taylor abstained.] 

3. ) Data presented to the Commission showed that success in a STEM major depends both on 
the student's absolute entering academic credentials and on the student's entering academic 
credentials relative to other students in the class. When a student is in a class in which his or 
her entry credentials are significantly different from the median student, the student is 
“mismatched" for that class. This mismatch causes a loss of learning, either because the 
positively mismatched student is not challenged by the material or because the negatively 
mismatched student feels overwhelmed by the speed at which the material is being taught. 
[Approved 4-1-2: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano. Heriot, and Kirsanow 
voted in favor; Commissioner Yaki voted against; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioner 
Taylor abstained.] 

4. ) Data presented to the Commission indicated that racial or ethnic discrimination in college 
was not a substantial factor in black and Hispanic college students' disproportionate attrition 
from STEM majors. The evidence showed that when black and white students have the same 
academic index scores, black students are more likely than white students to receive a STEM 
degree. [Approved 4-0-3: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano. Heriot and 
Kirsanow voted in favor; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioners Taylor and Yaki 
abstained.] 

5. ) The practice of racial and ethnic preferences is one way in which black and Hispanic 
students may be admitted to a college or university at which their entering academic 
credentials are significantly lower than those of their peers. When top tier colleges and 
universities use racial and ethnic preferences to recruit and admit minority students with 
academic credentials that are significantly below their median — but match the median of 
lower tier colleges — the resulting mismatch at the top tier institutions has a cascading effect 
through many lower tiers as each tier engages in racial and ethnic preferences to recruit and 



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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


admit black and Hispanic students who do not match the mean in its respective tier. 

Although the consequence of this cascading mismatch is not the principal reason for the 
current disparities between blacks and Hispanics and whites and Asians in STEM (see 
Finding 3 regarding absolute credentials), it is a significant reason. There are fewer black 
and Hispanic physicians, scientists and engineers today than there would have been if 
colleges and universities had not recruited and admitted black and Hispanic students with 
significantly lower academic credentials than their average student. [Approved 4-1-2: 
Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, and Kirsanow voted in favor; 
Commissioner Yaki voted against; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioner Taylor 
abstained.] 

6. ) The high STEM-major attrition rate of students with credentials deficits indicates that 
many students and their parents may be unaware of the significance of mismatch for 
students’ success in STEM fields because of the lack of institutional transparency. [Approved 
4-1-2: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot and Taylor voted in favor; 
Commissioner Yaki voted against; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioner Kirsanow 
abstained.] 

7. ) One panelist indicated that some graduate schools that have intensive support programs 
have been successful in ameliorating the effects of a moderate degree of mismatch. 

[Approved 4-1-2: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot and Kirsanow 
voted in favor; Commissioner Yaki voted against; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioner 
Taylor abstained.] 


Recommendations 

1. ) A selective college or university should not admit any student with a large deficit in 
academic credentials relative to its median student without fully informing the student of the 
impact this deficit could have. Such deficits place students at a high risk of failure. 

[Approved 5-3: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, Kirsanow and 
Taylor voted in favor; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioners Melendez and Yaki voted 
against.] 

2. ) In addition to providing other appropriate support and advice to students interested in 
STEM majors and careers, high school guidance counselors should advise these students 
about the significant impact of large deficits in academic credentials on college performance. 
[Approved 5-3: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, Kirsanow and 
Taylor voted in favor; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioners Melendez and Yaki voted 
against.] 

3. ) Each individual student's right to decide which school to attend — based on the best 
available evidence and with help from parents and advisors — should be respected. To aid 
students with the decision-making process, schools with STEM programs should disclose to 
all admitted students their projected college grade point averages (and the range of error). 
Schools should also disclose to interested students the school's track record for graduating 



Findings and Recommendations 


5 


students with similar academic indices in STEM majors. [Approved 4-3-1: Chairman 
Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano. Heriot and Taylor voted in favor; Vice Chair 
Themstrom and Commissioners Melendez and Yaki voted against; Commissioner Kirsanow 
abstained.] 

4. ) Well-designed academic support programs can sometimes help students with modest 
deficits in credentials to succeed in STEM programs. Schools should study and implement 
the best practices employed by successful academic support programs. Schools should also 
routinely disclose information about academic support sendees to all admitted students. 
[Approved 5-3: Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, Kirsanow and 
Taylor voted in favor; Vice Chair Themstrom and Commissioners Melendez and Yaki voted 
against.] 

5. ) K-12 schools should recruit qualified math and science teachers using, if necessary, pay 
adjustments and incentives. [Approved 7-0: Chairman Reynolds, Vice Chair Themstrom, 
and Commissioners Gaziano, Heriot, Kirsanow, Taylor and Yaki voted in favor; 
Commissioner Melendez did not participate in the vote.] 


















. i -'-r. 































Summary of Proceedings 


7 


Summary of Proceedings 

Richard Sander 

Professor Richard Sander - has both a Ph.D. in economics and a JD, and is a professor at 
LCLA Law School where he conducts empirical research on social policy. He began by 
discussing the different underrepresentation rates among major racial groups with respect to 
earning an undergraduate or doctoral degree in general education and in STEM disciplines/' 
His data analysis 4 indicated that black students were less likely than white students to earn a 
bachelor's degree of any kind or a doctorate, relative to their proportion of the general 
population. Professor Sander stated that underrepresentation in science is even more 
disproportionate: blacks are 36 percent as likely as whites to earn a bachelor’s degree in 
science, 15 percent as likely to earn a doctorate in science, and 8 percent as likely to earn a 
non-biological science doctorate. He said that underrepresentation among Hispanics was 
similar to that of African-Americans with respect to undergraduate and graduate degrees, but 
that Asians were overrepresented in science relative to their population numbers. He added 
that within a science degree population, however. Hispanics are better represented relative to 
their concentrations in other disciplines. 

Professor Sander set out four hypotheses to explain STEM underrepresentation among non- 
Asian minority students (slide 3): 

• Black and Hispanic students are less interested in science than whites and Asians 
(Hypothesis 1); 

• Black and Hispanic students have lower achievement levels and credentials by the 
time they finish hish school, which affects their subsequent success rate (Hypothesis 
2 ); 

• Minority students have worse outcomes because of factors such as discrimination or 
inadequate support (Hypothesis 3); and 

• Many capable minority students go into science but struggle or leave those disciplines 
because of mismatch. Professor Sander defined “mismatch'' as any loss of learning 
that occurs because of a disparity between the credentials of a student and the median 
credentials of his classmates in a learning environment (Hypothesis 4)/ Such 
disparities can be the result of admissions policies that emphasize affirmative action. 


' STEM Briefing Tr. (hereinafter Tr.) at 11-23. Professor Sander stated that he was presenting preliminary 
research, subject to revision, based on data obtained in July 2008 from the University of California, Office of the 
President. Dr. Sander stated that he was collaborating with several other scholars in a study of science mismatch 
in the University of California system that he hoped would be completed in 2009. During his testimony, he 
referred to projected images (slides 1-20) which can be found at the end of this summary. 

' Please refer to slide 2; slide 1 is a title page. Subsequent references to slides will appear in the text. 

J His data interpretation showed relative proportions of general and science degrees earned by college-aged 
students of different races compared to a white norm set at 100. This data interpretation showed that black 
students were 56 percent as likely to earn a BA of any kind, and 43 percent as likely to earn a Ph.D. 

• According to Dr. Sander, ‘'positive mismatch" occurs when a student is not challenged, since the student can 
learn more and at a faster rate than his classmates; "negative mismatch” occurs when a student falls behind or 
feels overwhelmed because of the speed or complexity with which material is presented. 




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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology . Engineering & Math Careers 


Professor Sander found evidence to support both Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 4. On the 
other hand, the evidence he presented contradicted Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 3. 

Professor Sander presented data from several studies that showed black and Hispanic high 
school seniors are at least as interested in becoming science majors as whites. Based on this 
research, Sander argued that Hypothesis 1 (black and Hispanic students are simply less 
interested in science careers) is unsupported (slides 4, 5). 

By contrast, Professor Sander found that his data supported Hypothesis 2 (black and Hispanic 
high school graduates have lower achievement levels and credentials that affect their STEM 
success rate) and was probably the major explanation for both their lower graduation rates in 
general and higher attrition rates in science in particular (slide 6). 

Professor Sander explained that a widely-read book on affirmative action, The Shape of the 
River, 6 by William Bowen and Derek Bok, has somewhat obscured the relationship between 
entering academic credentials and academic success. In that book, Bowen and Bok presented 
evidence that at elite schools, SAT scores are not a good predictor of the likelihood of 
graduation and that graduation rates are high from these schools regardless of SAT scores. 7 
Sander stated that any conclusion that SAT scores don’t matter to academic success or to 
graduation rates in general is fundamentally wrong and has not held up to further research. 

To illustrate the relationship between entering academic credentials and academic success, he 
offered an analysis of data obtained from the University of Michigan on several thousand 
undergraduates who matriculated in 1999. This database made use of an “academic index” 
assigned to each student by the University of Michigan, which took into consideration both 
standardized test scores and high school record. Grouping students into three cohorts based 
on whether they had received a large preference, a moderate preference, or no apparent 
preference, Sander found that black students who received a large preference had a four-year 
graduation rate of 21 percent, compared to a 73 percent four-year graduation rate for black 
students who received no preference (slide 10). A broadly similar pattern held for whites. He 
also offered data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, which showed that 
students, both black and white, with higher academic credentials have higher four-year 
graduation rates than those with lower academic credentials (slide 11). Both sets of data 
showed also that blacks with high credentials had a higher four-year graduation rate than 
whites with similar credentials. 

Professor Sander attempted to demonstrate that what is true for graduation rates also holds 
for concentration in the sciences: high credentials are important. He observed that for the 


6 William Bowen & Derek Bok, The Shape of the River, (Princeton University Press 2000). 

7 Bowen and Bok looked only at elite schools and only at SAT scores, not at other academic credentials like 
high school grades. At some schools, students with SAT scores above the school’s median may tend to have 
lower high school grades than the average student’s and vice versa; indeed this may account for why the student 
is attending that school and not a more (or less) competitive one. As a consequence, efforts to show how well 
SAT scores predict academic success that do not control for high school grades will obscure rather than reveal 
an important relationship. 




Summary of Proceedings 


9 


1999 Michigan entering students. 5 percent of blacks who received substantial preferences 
ended up majoring in science or engineering, compared with 43 percent of blacks who 
received no preference (slide 9). His analysis revealed that whites displayed a similar pattern: 
4 percent of those who received a large preference ended up majoring in science or 
engineering, versus 33 percent who received no preference. As with graduation. Dr. Sander 
stated that blacks with high academic credentials were more likely to major in science or 
engineering than were whites with the same credentials. He determined that this not only 
supported Hypothesis 2 (credential levels have a significant impact in producing science 
graduates), but contradicted Hypothesis 3 (discrimination and inadequate academic support 
undermine black and Hispanic academic performance). If high-credential blacks are more 
likely to major in and graduate from science programs than high-credential whites at 
Michigan, then Dr. Sander did not think it likely that discrimination plays a meaningful role 
in STEM attrition/ He stated that the problem is that blacks (and to a lesser extent. 

Hispanics) are far more clustered in the lower-index/high-preference ranges at Michigan than 
are whites and Asians. 

To examine Hypothesis 4 (the effect of “mismatch” on minority success in science), Dr. 
Sander turned to his analysis of a large data set that he obtained from the University of 
California. Office of the President (UCOP), that covered nearly a half-million UC students 
from 1992 through 2006 (slide 13). He stated that to test mismatch, one must compare 
students with similar credentials who are attending institutions with different degrees of 
admissions selectivity (slide 12). He stated, for example, that a student with solid but not 
outstanding credentials might be close to the student median at UC Santa Barbara, but be 
able to attend UC Berkeley only with the benefit of a significant preference, and thus be 
potentially affected by mismatch (slide 13). He believed that the UCOP data set makes it 
possible to compare many thousands of similar students in different academic settings. 

Dr. Sander said that his preliminary analysis of the UCOP data strongly supports his 
mismatch hypothesis (slides 14-19). When he compared students at Berkeley and UCLA 
whose credentials were substantially lower than the median with similar students attending 
other UC campuses, the students at less selective campuses had much higher probabilities of 
graduating with a science degree, often double the science graduation rate of such students at 
Berkeley and UCLA. He said this held true whether or not one limited the analysis to 
students intending to major in science in college, or if one considered only underrepresented 
minority students or all students with potential mismatch at Berkeley or UCLA. It also held 
true at several different time periods. 

Dr. Sander also compared students at UCLA and Berkeley whose credentials were equal to 
or stronger than their median classmates with similar students at other campuses. Since these 
students would not be mismatched at UCLA or Berkeley, mismatch theory would predict that 
they would not be at any disadvantage at those schools. Dr. Sander’s data (slide 19) found 


8 Dr. Sander noted that in slide 10’s data set, blacks (and to a lesser extent. Hispanics) are far more clustered in 
the lower-index,high-preference ranges at Michigan than are whites and Asians, meaning that conclusions as to 
high-preference white rates are based on relatively few data points. 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


that these students had higher science graduation rates at Berkeley and UCLA than the 
average rate for the median students at the other six UC campuses. 

Professor Sander also reported on data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment study, 9 
which attempts to measure student learning at nearly 200 American colleges (slide 20). He 
examined cross-section data on factors influencing whether a student was a math major, 
including as independent variables student credentials, “mismatch” (measured by the gap 
between a student’s credentials and the average credentials of his peers at that college), race, 
and gender. His analysis found that the degree of mismatch between student and school was 
the strongest (and very negative) predictor of seniors choosing to major in math; credentials 
were also strongly predictive, while neither sex nor race predicted pursuit of a math degree. 
He viewed this, too, as supporting hypotheses two and four (the role of credentials and 
mismatch) and as cutting against hypotheses one and three (student interest and 
discrimination). 

(Note: Professor Sander’s slides begin on the following page.) 


9 See http://www.ssrc.org/press/cla-study (accessed Apr. 6, 2009). 




Summary of Proceedings 


11 


Slide 1 


Does the “Mismatch Effect” Reduce 
the Ranks of Minority Scientists? 

A Presentation to the 
US Civil Rights Commission 
September 12, 2008 
Dr. Richard Sander, UCLA 


Slide 2 


How Significant Is the 
Racial Gap in Science? 


Freq Rel 
to Pop 

White 

Black 

Hispanic 

Asian 

Gen Pop 

100 

100 

100 

100 

BA 

100 

56 

33 

128 

Ph.D. 

100 

43 

21 

130 

BA 

Science 

100 

36 

41 

454 

Ph.D. 

Science 

100 

15 

26 

703 



















12 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Slide 3 


Slide 4 


Four Possible Hypotheses 

• Hypothesis 1: Black and Hispanic students are less 
interested in science than whites and Asians. 

• Hypothesis 2: Lower achievement and credentials for Blacks 
and Hispanics by the time of high school graduation translates 
to lower success rates in science during and after college. 

• Hypothesis 3: Minority college students studying science have 
worse outcomes than similar white and Asian students, 
because of factors like discrimination. 

• Hypothesis 4: Many talented minorities interested in science 
are admitted through preferences into colleges where their 
credentials are much lower than those of their classmates. 
This “mismatch” causes them to struggle in science classes 
and either leave science or leave college. 


Hypothesis One: Are minorities 
less interested in science? 

• The evidence is consistent and overwhelming that Black 
and Hispanic high school seniors are slightly more 
interested in a science career than are whites. (Asians 
are still more interested, by a substantial margin.) 

• When credentials are taken into account, the higher level 
of Black and Hispanic interest is even more pronounced. 







Summary of Proceedings 


13 


Slide 5 


Comparison Group 

Proportion of students of each race intending to 
maior in science 

White 

Black [ I lispamc 

Asian 

University of California - 
Average 

34 7% 

37 5% 

526% 

University of Califomia- 
2004-2006 

37 3% 

40 5% 

57.1% 

HHRJ -CIRP data (Astin 
et al) 

27 3% 

34.2% 

35 7% 

526% 

Rogers Elliott data (4 
elite institutions) 

41.4% 

44 2% 

44.0% 

55.0% 


Slide 6 

Hypothesis Two: Do achievement levels 
through high school shape 
later success in science? 

• Yes, very much so. 

• There's a mythology that’s been fostered by many 
defenders of affirmative action that credentials have little 
or no impact upon success in college. What matters is 
not one's preparation going in, but which college one 
attends. Hence, preferences are crucial. 

• This was a core proposition advanced by Bowen & Bok 
in The Shape of the River. 

























14 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Slide 7 


Slide 8 


Graduation Rates, by Combined SAT Score and Race. 1989 



Graduation Rates, by Combined SAT Scores. 
Actual and Adjusted. 1989 



0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 

Graduation Rate 










































































































































































Summary of Proceedings 


15 


Slide 9 


Proportion of Students Majoring in Science 
by Index Band at the University of Michigan 


Slide 

10 


45% 

40% 

35% 

30% 

% Majoring in 25% 

Hard Science 

20 % 

15% 

10 % 

5% 

0 % 

Index Score 


Michigan 4-Year Graduation Rates 


1999 

Entering 

Cohort 

Large 

Preference 

Moderate 

Preference 

No 

Preference 

Whites 

35% 

52% 

70% 


50% 73% 


Blacks 21% 





























16 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Slide 

11 


Slide 

12 


National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen 


Predicted Probability of Graduation by Academic Index, Race and College Type 



- Blacks (public) .. Whites (public) 

- Blacks (private) - Whites (private) 


Hypotheses Three and Four 

• From my preliminary examinations of the data, it seems 
likely that “credential gaps” that exist at the end of high 
school account for 60-75% of the “science achievement” 
gap between Blacks and Hispanics, on the one hand, 
and whites on the other. 

• To oversimplify, a central question is whether the rest of 
the gap is due to poor treatment of minorities in college 
or to the “mismatch” effects resulting from preferences. 

• To test this, we want to compare similar students who 
experience different levels of mismatch, and we want to 
compare outcomes that control for race, mismatch, and 
credentials. 












Summary of Proceedings 


17 


Slide 

13 


The University of California data 


• In the past six weeks, Project Seaphe has obtained an 
enormous volume of data from the UC system, covering 
the period 1992-2006 across eight UC campuses, 
ranging from the very elite (Berkeley and UCLA) to very 
good but non-elite schools (Riverside and UC Santa 
Cruz). It is possible to examine college outcomes - in 
particular, the outcome of getting a BA in science - by 
comparing students who are heavily “mismatched” at 
Berkeley with similar students who attend other UC 
campuses. These students will be substantially 
mismatched at UCLA, but only moderately mismatched 
at other campuses. 


Slide 

14 


Predicted Probability of Getting Science BA 
(other covariates fixed at mean) 



Underrepresented minorities entered in 92-94 (Data: UCOP) 


0UCB OUCLA 0UCSD QUCSB 
SUCSC BUCI SUCR BUCD 































18 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology , Engineering & Math Careers 


Slide 

15 


Slide 

16 


Predicted Probability of Getting Science BA 
(other covariates fixed at mean) 


0.12 -I 
010 -■ 

0.08 -■ 

0 06 -■ 

0.04 -■ 

0 02 -■ 

0 00 - 

Underrepresented minorities in 95-97 (Data: UCOP) 




mm 


wmw 


• ■: .V7- 


0UCB 

□ UCLA 

0UCSD 

□ UCSB 

eUCSC 

■ UCI 

fflUCR 

a UCD 


Predicted Probability of Getting Science BA 
(other covariates fixed at mean) 


0.10 

0 08 

0 06 

0 04 

0 02 

0 00 



Underrepresented Minorities Entered in 98-00 (Data: UCOP) 


0UCB □ UCLA 

0UCSC mUC\ 


□ UCSD □UCSB 

®UCR ■UCD 























































































































Summary of Proceedings 


19 


Slide 

17 


% of Entering Science Freshmen Getting Science Degrees, 
based on "Mismatch" at Berkeley. 97-99 



Slide 

18 


0 Berkeley 

□ UCLA 

□ San Diego 

□ Santa Bar 

§ Santa Cruz 

■ Irvine 

□ Riverside 

■ Davis 


% of Entering Science URM Freshmen Getting Science 
Degrees, based on "Mismatch" at Berkeley 


45 

40 

35 

30 

25 

20 

15 

10 

5 

0 


aBerkeley aUCLA sSan Diego QSantaBar 



§ Santa Cruz ■ Irvine a Riverside ■ Davis 















































































































































20 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


% of Entering Science Freshmen Getting Science Degrees, 
based on "Positive Mismatch" at Berkeley 



0 Berkeley nUCLA m San Diego □ Santa Bar 

§ Santa Cruz ■ Irvine s Riverside s Davis 


Slide 

20 


An analysis with CLA data 
Examining Predictors of Being a Math Major 
As A College Senior 


Variable 

Standardized 

Coefficient 

Significance 

Level 

Intercept 

n/a 

<.0001 

SAT 

.19 

<.0001 

Mismatch 

-.25 

<.0001 

Gender 

-.03 

.41 

Black 

.006 

.91 








































































Summary of Proceedings 


21 


Richard Tapia 

Dr. Richard Tapia. " Rice University Professor of Engineering and Director of the Rice 
Center for Excellence and Equity in Education, stated that under his leadership. Rice 
University has produced what he believes is likely the largest number of underrepresented- 
minority math, science, and engineering doctoral graduates in the country. Unlike the 
testimony of Dr. Sander and Dr. Elliott. Dr. Tapia's testimony centered on graduate, rather 
than undergraduate, education. He noted that Rice University is a highly competitive top 
research university. 

Dr. Tapia recounted his personal history as an underrepresented minority whose parents 
came to the United States from Mexico, and his early education at a below-average high 
school in Los Angeles where he was not counseled to attend college despite his mathematical 
talent. He praised math teachers at the community college he attended for directing him to 
UCLA, where he earned a doctorate in math. He described his achievements, such as being 
the first native-born Hispanic elected to the National Academy of Engineering, first minority 
mathematician promoted to the rank of University Professor, and an appointee to the 
National Science Board under President Clinton. Dr. Tapia also cited minority STEM 
graduates who have gone on to distinguished careers. 11 

He stated that the STEM disciplines are a fundamental asset to national economies, and that 
the United States leads the world in STEM higher education, producing STEM leaders for 
most of the world's industrial nations. He stated that top research universities choose faculty 
with doctorates from top research universities, and that professors with doctorates from 
minority-serving or less prestigious schools are not considered for faculty positions in top 
schools. 

Dr. Tapia did not dispute Dr. Sander's and Dr. Elliott's data supporting the mismatch 
theory. * 1- He did state, however, that in his view, minority students and faculty must have an 
“equitable presence'’ at top research universities to serve as role models and mentors. He 
asserted that including the larger number of Ph.D.s from lesser universities in data showing 
total numbers of minority STEM graduates would perpetuate the stereotype that minorities 
receive inferior STEM education. He said the proper form of affirmative action is ensuring 
that very capable students are not excluded by an overly rigid use of standardized test scores. 
In his program, he applies a cutoff score, both to exclude those who have little chance of 
succeeding and to include those who may be on the threshold but will succeed with good 
mentoring. He stated that applicants with combined math-verbal scores of 1400 or above are 
well able to succeed, and he does not base admissions judgments on scores that are at or 
above that level. With regard to cutoff scores, Dr. Tapia agreed with Dr. Sander that there is 


10 Tr. at 23-24. 

1 See Dr. Tapia’s statement in the "Statements” section. 

12 In his written statement. Dr. Tapia stated: "The mismatch theorists have focused light on a huge problem that 

I have been fighting at Rice for 20 years. The data they present are entirely credible to me because they reflect 
what I have seen at Rice. So I do not dispute the data. It is the recommendations they make based upon the data 
that are terribly flawed.” See Tapia Statement below at page 35 of this report. 




22 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


much more predictive information at the lower ranges of SAT scores than there is at the top, 
meaning that someone with combined math-verbal scores below 800 will probably not be 
successful in any STEM discipline. He stated that each year his program rejects several 
applicants with perfect 1600 SAT scores because test scores are not enough to predict 
success. 

Dr. Tapia claimed success in graduate student retention by providing peer/faculty mentoring 
and community-building, eliminating deficiencies in preparation, and combating minority 
students’ perceptions of isolation, which he considers the chief problem in many cases. 

At the same time, he agreed that admission without retention is of negative value. * 1. 

Moreover, he conceded that most efforts to increase minority presence in STEM graduate 
programs and faculties have not been effective. 

He nevertheless stated that bringing a minority-serving school up to the level of Rice is not as 
realistic as creating retention programs at Rice that would have the same retention success 
rate as those at the minority-serving institutions. Dr. Tapia stated that a student with lower 
STEM grades from a top research school is stronger than a student with top grades from a 
minority-serving school. He concluded his remarks by emphasizing that “treating everyone 
the same is not good enough,’' 14 and “if we leave schools alone and don’t fix them, then the 
disaster that is happening will continue.” 16 

Rogers Elliott 

Dr. Rogers Elliott, 16 Emeritus Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth 
College, stated that his data supported Dr. Sander’s findings concerning mismatch (Dr. 

Elliott noted that his analysis and data published in 1996 formed an early instance of what 
Dr. Sander termed “the mismatch hypothesis.” 17 ) and that race preferences in admissions 
were harming the aspirations of some black students seeking to be scientists. He asserted that 
the differences are largest at the most selective universities because of their high admissions 
standards (two standard deviations above average in developed ability), which some 
minorities, especially some black students, fail to meet. 

Dr. Elliott described his research among 5,300 students in four Ivy League schools between 
1988 and 1992. 18 He reported that the black versus white/Asian gap in SAT scores has 
actually widened since 1988, and is now about 209 points. His data included the students’ 
high school and college transcripts, and SAT scores. The results (slide 1) showed that an 


13 Tr. at 28. 

14 Tr. at 34. 

13 See http://www.caam.rice.edu/~rat/cv/minority/mismatch_theory_statement_2008-09-12.htm (accessed Jan. 
8, 2009). 

16 Tr. at 34-43. 

1 Rogers Elliott, A. Christopher Strenta, Russell Adair, Michael Matier and Jannah Scott, “The Role of 
Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions,’' 37 Res. in Higher Ed. No. 6 at 
681-709(1996). 

Is Dartmouth College; Brown, Cornell, and Yale universities. Tr. at 39. 




Summary of Proceedings 


23 


equal portion (about 43 or 44 percent) of incoming students of the three major racial ethnic 
groups (with whites and Asians combined as one group) intended to major in science, but 
that the science persistence rates were considerably lower for Hispanics and blacks: 34 
percent for blacks and 56 percent for Hispanics. versus 62 percent for the white Asian 
group. " These data showed that the average incoming SAT math score for whites and 
combined white Asian groups interested in science majors was 715 (the 50th percentile of all 
incoming students): the average SAT math score for Hispanics was in the 16th percentile, 
and the average SAT math score for blacks was in the 4th percentile of the white Asian 
distribution, a difficult competitive position. - ' A general college preparedness score called 
the academic index, which consists of high school grades and rank, and achievement and 
SAT test scores, showed similar percentiles for the racial groups in Dr. Elliott's data. 

Dr. Elliott emphasized that because science knowledge is hierarchical (meaning that a 
student must understand material in one course before advancing to the next) students who 
arrived unprepared for the level and pace of work at the highly selective schools in his study 
were unable to advance successfully through the course sequence compared to the 90 percent 
of students who were well prepared. His data showed that science grades broken down by 
SAT math scores reflect this. - More specifically. 90 percent of science majors had SAT 
math scores of 650 or better; of that group. 80 percent were white or Asian students. Only 25 
percent of black students in the four Ivy League schools reached that score. Since the score 
of 650 appeared to be a break point in the function describing the relation between SAT math 
scores and the probability of majoring in science (slide 2). blacks were clearly at a 
disadvantage. 

Dr. Elliott's STEM retention data for white Asian students was 63 percent. 56 percent for 
Hispanic students (Dr. Elliott viewed this figure as quite good), and 34 percent for black 
students. He stated that for the year 2008. SAT math score data indicate that only about 
3.200 -- black students in the country reached 650. a number he viewed as problematic for 
STEM recruitment to elite research institutions. He contrasted the 50 percent chance that 
someone in the top third of SAT math scores in a very selective school would get one of the 
science degrees awarded, with the 15 percent chance that a student in the bottom third would 
set a science degree. At a less selective institution, a student with an SAT score that would 

Sm* W 


19 Students who dropped out of science programs did not usually drop out of school: they may have switched to 
other majors. 

20 Dr. Elliott's data as presented to the Commission in three slides, showed an entering average Hispanic SAT 
math score of 653 and an entering average score for black students of 607. The slides are reproduced 
immediately after this summary. 

:: For a more detailed explanation, please see the attached statement of Dr. Elliott, also available at 
http: www.seaphe.org pdf elliott-ethnicity.pdf (accessed Jan. 8. 2009). 

Dr. Elliott submitted corrections by communications dated April 1. 2009 and July 7, 2009. SAT score data for 
2008 show that black students who scored at or above 650 on the SAT math section were at the 98th percentile 
of black SAT-takers that year. See 

http: professionals.collegeboard.com profdownload sat_percentile_ranks_2008_cr_m_w_gender_ethnic_group 
s.pdf (accessed Feb. 20. 2009). 





24 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


be relatively low for a very selective institution would increase his chances of getting a 

• O'! 

science degree, (slide 3). 

Dr. Elliott acknowledged the value of a degree from a top school." 4 He stated that he did not 
know how to address this dilemma, other than to point out that it is probably better for an 
aspiring black scientist to go to a school where he or she could get a science degree than to 
suffer the consequences of relative unpreparedness in a school where he or she was 
overmatched. 

Dr. Elliott’s slides are reproduced below. 

Slide 1 


Table 2, Revised and Simplified 

Preadmission and College Performance Measures for Students Initially Interested In 

Science 


Measures 

White/Asian 

(N=1782) 

Hispanic (N-95) 

Black (N=157) 


M Percentile 

M | Percentile 

M 1 Percentile 

A. Preadmissions 

% initial 
interest 

43.3 

44.0 

44.2 

Number HS 

Science 

Courses 

9.95 

50 

9.58 

38 

9.47 

35 

HS Science 
Grades 

3.76 

50 

3.62 

33 

3.44 

15 

HS Other 
Grades 

3.68 

50 

3.51 

38 

3.46 

34 

SATM 

715 

50 

653 

16 

607 

4 

"SATV 

626 

50 

563 

26 

541 

13 

SAT II, ACH 

678 

50 

630 

23 

573 

6 

Academic 

Index 

207.2 

50 

193.7 

15 

182.4 

4 

B. College Performance 

Science 

Grades 

2.98 

50 

2.46 

23 

2.21 

14 

Other Grades 

3.23 

50 

2.97 

32 

2.85 

24 

% Science 
Majors 

62.3 


55.8 


33.8 


% 

Termination 

4.1 


10.5 


14.6 



Note. — “Percentile” refers to the place on the White/Asian distribution of the average 
member of each group 


23 Dr. Elliott referred during his testimony to three slides on view during his briefing testimony. This is labeled 
“Slide 3” in this Commission report. This table can also be found at page 701 of that article and is entitled, 
“Table 4. Percentage of Earned Degrees in the Natural Sciences as a Function of Terciles of the SATM 
Distribution in 11 Institutions.” 

24 Dr. Elliott noted that the biggest undergraduate science degree-granting schools for blacks in this country 
were not considered prestigious. 









































Summary of Proceedings 


25 


Slide 2 (Figures for four Ivy League schools) 


ETHNICITY IN CHOOSING AND LEAVING SCIENCE 



FIG. 2. Probability of majoring in science given a particular SATM score. 





26 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Slide 3 



Tercile 

1 

Tercile 

2 

Tercile 

3 

Institution 

% Degrees 

SATM 

% Degrees 

SATM 

% Degrees 

SATM 

Institution A 

53.4 

753 

31.2 

674 

15.4 

581 

Institution B 

57.3 

729 

29.8 

656 

12.9 

546 

Institution C 

45.6 

697 

34.7 

631 

19.7 

547 

Institution D 

53.6 

697 

31.4 

626 

15.0 

534 

Institution E 

51.0 

696 

34.7 

624 

14.4 

534 

Institution F 

57.3 

688 

24.0 

601 

18.8 

494 

Institution G 

62.1 

678 

22.6 

583 

15.4 

485 

Institution H 

49.0 

663 

32.4 

573 

18.6 

492 

Institution 1 

51.8 

633 

27.3 

551 

20.8 

479 

Institution J 

54.9 

591 

33.9 

514 

11.2 

431 

Institution K 

55.0 

569 

27.1 

472 

17.8 

407 

Medians 

53.6 


31.4 


15.4 



Note : Percentages indicate the proportion of natural science degrees awarded to 
students as a function of terciles of the SATM score distribution. SATM numbers are 
mean scores for each tercile, which vary depending on the selectivity and general 
level of developed ability that characterizes an institution. SATM is the score on the 
mathematical reasoning section of the Scholastic Assessment Test. 

Thomas Fortmann 

Dr. Thomas Fortmann, who has an undergraduate degree in physics from Stanford and a 
doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT, provided a teacher’s view of the two questions 
posed by the Commission’s briefing topic: 1) why minority students disproportionately leave 
STEM disciplines, and 2) whether better matching between student and school means that 
more are likely to succeed. 

His answer to the first question was that anyone who arrives in college with inadequate 
STEM preparation will have difficulty finishing a science major, and that certain minorities 
frequently have not had adequate K-12 science and math preparation. He described the 
cumulative nature of math knowledge, which requires that students master information in 
sequence. 

He recounted his efforts to improve STEM teaching by founding an institute to train 
elementary school teachers in mathematics content. He stated that attempts by programs such 
as Massachusetts’s STEM Pipeline Initiative 26 which attempts to prepare more K-12 students 
for further STEM study, are well-intentioned, but do not address the root cause of the 
problem. He offered as an example a simple fractions question given to fifth- and sixth-grade 


25 Tr. at 43-52. 

26 

See http://www.massachusetts.edu/stem (accessed Apr. 3, 2009). 





















Summary of Proceedings 


27 


math teachers, only 24 percent of whom could answer it correctly. 2 He stated that 
Massachusetts will initiate an elementary teacher qualifying test and require college math 
courses to address this problem by the spring of 2009. Dr. Fortmann said that teacher quality 
is the most important underlying factor in student math achievement, and that math content 
knowledge among teachers in urban minority schools is very low. 

Dr. Fortmann's view of affirmative action is that, in the absence of sustained remediation as 
propounded by Dr. Tapia, it does not address the underlying math deficiencies in K-12 
education. Dr. Fortmann thus agreed with Dr. Sander and Dr. Elliott that it will consequently 
hinder some students' STEM progress. Dr. Fortmann argued that it was worth putting the 
limited resources available into increasing the pool of students able to enter STEM 
disciplines, rather than just recruiting harder from the same pool. He also recounted a 
statement by a dean of engineering at a major research state university that 50 percent of the 
people entering engineering majors eventually switch majors because of inadequate math 
preparation. - ^ 

He recommended that the Commission investigate, as a civil rights issue, w r hy so many 
minority students graduate from high school with so little STEM preparation, i.e., why they 
need affirmative action at all, and what policymakers can do about it. He believes that the 
answ ers are, among other things, school choice; better teacher preparation and more 
demanding math certification requirements; and differentiated pay scales and incentives. He 
also mentioned collective bargaining, accountability, standards-based testing, and school 
leadership as important issues. 

Robin Willner 

Ms. Robin Willner. 29 Vice President of Global Community Initiatives at IBM, testified that 
changes in the global economy make it even more important that the U.S. provide the talent 
and leadership it needs to remain competitive, and to this end, IBM has begun a STEM 
program with Latino [Hispanic] students. Ms. Willner stated that other countries have 
realized that their competitiveness relies on producing and keeping STEM talent. IBM’s view 
is that all sources of talent from all economic and ethnic groups need to be tapped, since the 
need for STEM graduates will grow by 50 percent, according to a U.S. Department of Labor 
study. Ms. Willner observed that the U.S. is the only industrialized country that will increase 
in population in the future, and that much of the growth will come from the Latino 
community; however, this community currently makes up a very small percentage (1.5 
percent) of STEM doctorates. She asserted that the high school dropout rates for Latinos 
were twice that of blacks and three times that of whites. 

Ms. Willner stated that commissioned research papers from Public Agenda, a nonprofit 
research organization, showed that the Latino educational pipeline is virtually broken in all 
subject areas, not just STEM, and that the major causes were poverty and lack of English 


27 Tr. at 49. 

28 Tr. at 47. 

29 Tr. at 52-62. 




28 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


language skills, role models, adequate parental involvement stemming from long work hours, 
language barriers, lack of formal schooling, and cultural attitudes. 

She related some of the actions taken by IBM, such as providing translation programming 
software and early childhood reading programs, and described a joint meeting on Latino 
STEM careers that IBM hosted for global companies such as Exxon Mobil, Lockheed 
Martin, and AMD. The meeting produced four chief recommendations, the second of which 
bears on the testimony of Dr. Sander and Dr. Elliott: 1) recruit, prepare, and retain qualified 
STEM teachers, increase the number of second-career STEM teachers, and redesign existing 
teacher preparation courses and certification; 2) reduce attrition in minority STEM graduates 
by moving them to programs where they will succeed and also to make sure they can succeed 
at the highest levels by providing appropriate mentoring, support services, and financial aid; 
3) increase the popularity of STEM careers in the Latino community; and 4) increase the 
Latino high school graduation rate by providing mentors, requiring performance standards of 
both high school and student, and providing internships. 



Discussion 


29 


Discussion 


Vice Chair Themstrom invited the panelists to respond to each other's testimony before 
opening the question period to Commissioners. ' 0 

Professor Sander began the discussion by summarizing the points of agreement among the 
panelists, such as the academic credentials gap between racial groups by the end of high 
school as the single biggest cause of the problems under discussion. He observed also that 
Dr. Tapia and Dr. Fortmann believed that such gaps might be counteracted by good academic 
support. Dr. Sander stated that most of the panelists did not deny that there was a mismatch 
problem, but differed on methods of handling it. Dr. Sander also posited that the credentials 
gap in large part was not caused solely by K-12 education, but by other environmental factors 
unrelated to schooling, such as low birth weight, parenting practices, socioeconomic 

i 

differences, and reading habits. He also referred to studies' that show that race does not 
predict credential score gaps if such environmental factors are controlled. Dr. Sander 
concluded that policymakers should look beyond race to seek out those who need help and 
end racial preference programs, particularly in the most selective universities whose use of 
race leads to preferences chiefly for upper-middle and upper-class applicants. 

Dr. Fortmann agreed that socioeconomic factors were important, as were parenting practices, 
and that K-12 education was not the sole cause of the credentials gap. He asserted, however, 
that there were schools, many of them charter, that improved the educational outcomes for 
students from disadvantaged backgrounds.'" Ms. Willner and Dr. Tapia agreed that such 
schools could make a large difference. Dr. Tapia cited two viable K-12 programs in which 
he was involved. '' and stated also that the practice of including all Hispanics in one group 
was misleading, since educational outcomes differ among subcategories such as Mexican- 
American. New York Puerto Rican, and Cuban, for example. He recounted coping methods 
he used as a UCLA student that included taking a reduced course load, and improving his 
performance in increments rather than all at once. 

Commissioner Kirsanow asked the panelists, particularly Ms. Willner, whether minority 
STEM graduates of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were in fact 
incompetent by private sector standards, and whether the private sector thought it was 
important that their new hires come from elite schools such as Harvard. Stanford, and 
Cornell. 


M Tr. at 63-149. 

3: See. e.g.. Roland Fryer. Jr. and Steven Levitt. "The Black-White Test Score Gap Through Third Grade." 
XBER Working Paper Series. Working Paper 11049. National Bureau of Economic Research, 
http: pricetheory.uchicago.edu levitt Papers FryerLevitt2005.pdf (accessed on September 21. 2009); 8 Am. 
Law Econ. Rev. 249-28 f (2006). 

3: Dr. Fortmann cited a case study of 15 schools in "It's Being Done: Academic Success in Unexpected 
Schools " by Karin Chenoweth. published by Elarvard Education Press (2007). 

33 -Risina Above the Gathering Storm." http: www.nap.edu catalog.php?record_id=l 1463 (accessed January 
13. 2009). 




30 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Dr. Tapia asserted that the HBCU STEM graduates were not incompetent, but insufficiently 
prepared to be competitive with graduates from schools such as Rice. Also important, in Dr. 
Tapia’s view, was recognizing that a degree from a highly selective school is necessary in 
order to be hired as faculty at a similarly selective school. Part of the problem, he stated, was 
that some HBCUs are wholly nonselective and are unable to enforce academic standards for 
fear of failing too many students. Dr. Tapia questioned whether HBCUs were at a point 
where they should reevaluate their role, since their original purpose resulted from segregation 
and the nation’s colleges are no longer segregated. 

Commissioner Kirsanow asked Ms. Willner to comment. She answered that the most 
important qualification was the applicant’s knowledge and skill, not the reputation of the 
school, but that more selective schools produced more highly skilled and creative graduates. 
Vice Chair Themstrom asked whether IBM had its own testing process for applicants. Ms. 
Willner stated that it did, but that to some extent the company used the reputation of the 
school as a proxy for such evaluation because of IBM’s familiarity with the schools’ 
programs. 

Professor Sander addressed Commissioner Kirsanow’s question by differentiating between 
mismatch in undergraduate and graduate STEM programs. Dr. Sander asserted that faculty 
hires are dependent almost entirely on the graduate advisor and school attended, whereas the 
science minority STEM dropout problem was an undergraduate problem that could be 
alleviated by reducing the mismatch between student and school. He referred to social 
science studies that showed HBCU graduates in both STEM and non-STEM majors who 
perform well in college have slightly better outcomes over the years than students who 
perform poorly at elite schools. 

Commissioner Gaziano asked Dr. Tapia if he thought it was better to have one successful 
STEM minority graduate from an elite school and a hundred STEM dropouts, or 100 STEM 
doctorates at slightly lesser schools. Dr. Tapia answered that 100 successful STEM graduates 
from lesser schools was a better outcome. 

Commissioner Gaziano then asked how large a mismatch could be before it undermined 
success. Dr. Tapia answered that the question should be why so many top math graduate 
schools made no effort to retain capable minorities, particularly public universities. Dr. 

Elliott answered that if the top schools reduced the degree of the mismatch of their minority 
STEM admits by admitting only the top half of those currently admitted, then schools down 
the selectivity index would have a greater number of properly matched minority STEM 
students available to them. Such students would then be at the 30th percentile of 
competitiveness within their schools, as compared to the fourth percentile. He acknowledged, 
however, that schools that are less selective also have much less money with which to assist 
students, and minority students often need such help. Dr. Elliott supported some degree of 
affirmative action in public universities, but pointed out that at the graduate level, elite 
schools take very high-level students and push them to meet extremely high standards. The 
outcome is a high level of performance at such schools, which if lowered, would result in a 
loss of the school’s reputation and elite status, and a loss in performance quality in their 
programs. 



Discussion 


31 


Dr. Tapia agreed with much of what Dr. Elliott had said concerning high levels of 
performance in elite private schools, but stated that public universities had a moral obligation 
to do more than just research using the highest performing students available regardless of 
racial or ethnic imbalances. 

Vice Chair Themstrom asked what effect there would be on K-12 schools with ill-trained 
teachers if colleges required uniform standards for even.’ applicant; and whether such 
standards would result in increased pressure on such K-12 schools because they would be 
unable to ascribe blame to others. 

Dr. Sander agreed that the mismatch effect is a problem for those students who receive the 
largest preferences, while his data concerning those students who receive modest preferences 
did not show a mismatch effect. He stated that socioeconomic preferences were less likely 
than racial preferences to produce mismatch effects because those credential gaps were 
smaller; economically disadvantaged students who persevered all the way to an elite school 
generally displayed essential elements for success, such as determination and drive. Dr. 
Sander also asserted that a student coming into a school at the 25th or 30th percentile in 
terms of credentials instead of at the 5th or 10th percentile could use the resources of the elite 
school more effectively. 

Ms. Willner agreed with Dr. Tapia that the size of the preference (degree of mismatch) is 
what determines a student's success or failure in a STEM program. She stated that accepting 
an applicant whose credentials are far below those of the other accepted candidates is 
different from accepting a student at the top of the SAT scale (1400-1600) with some leeway 
for modest differences from the median. She agreed with Dr. Tapia that someone at the lower 
end of the SAT scale with a combined score of 800 would not succeed in a selective STEM 
program. She also agreed with Dr. Tapia that public universities have an obligation to 
provide effective support and interventions to students admitted to their programs, and that 
CBM views as critically important the existence of a diverse group of STEM graduates 
available to global companies. Dr. Tapia emphasized that it was important for potential 
minority students to see faculty of their own ethnicity or race because that gave them a sense 
that they were not alone, and that others of their ethnicity or race had succeeded. 

Commissioner Gaziano asked Dr. Fortmann what minimum qualifications math teachers 
should have; for example, whether second-career STEM professionals need further 
certification to be able to teach in K-12 schools. Dr. Fortmann responded that Massachusetts 
allows someone to obtain a provisional license for immediate entry into K-12 teaching, but 
that requirements differ from district to district. He noted also that such teachers rarely enter 
elementary or middle schools, so there is still a need to improve the qualifications of existing 
K-8 teachers. Ms. Willner added that IBM offers its employees a teaching skills program that 
facilitates the transition to K-12 STEM teaching, because knowing the content area is not 
enough to become a good teacher. The program, called ’Transition to Teaching," helps 
develop the other essential skills in teaching, and provides a paid leave of absence for student 
teaching before the employee leaves IBM. 



32 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Vice Chair Themstrom observed that other programs also have been successful in placing 
non-education majors into classrooms after very short preparation, such as the Teach for 
America program. Ms. Willner agreed, but added that in her experience, most people who 
participate in that program claim that the first year of teaching was unnecessarily difficult 
because of inadequate preparation. 

Dr. Fortmann agreed with Ms. Willner’s support of more extensive teaching preparation than 
what is provided in the Teach for America program, but did not believe that an entire year of 
education courses, or the onerous certification requirements in many states, was necessary. 

Commissioner Kirsanow stated that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grutter decision 34 set limits on 
a school’s use of racial or ethnic preferences of any size in admissions. He pointed out that 
however important diverse points of view were in law schools for admissions purposes, and 
thus arguably within the bounds of the Constitution, the same could hardly be said of physics 
and math disciplines in which ethnic differences were irrelevant to the quantitative analysis 
performed. 

Dr. Tapia believed that an ethnically broad student and faculty community teaches white 
students how to deal with people of different ethnicities and races. He also stated that such 
experience in a broadened academic environment allowed students to build a multi-ethnic 
academic community that would last throughout their lives. He added that, in his view, court 
decisions had significantly cut back affirmative action programs, with the result that colleges 
now recruited from abroad to the detriment of American minorities. 

Professor Sander raised two points concerning the practical effects of race preferences. First, 
he stated that the use of preferences may produce both positive and negative results, meaning 
that preferences may combat negative stereotypes by the increased presence of minorities, 
but may also reinforce negative stereotypes if the ability differences are large—on the order 
of a two standard deviation gap. Second, he stated that large racial preferences further isolate 
such students socially from normally admitted students, resulting in increased self¬ 
segregation along racial lines. Professor Sander supported this statement by citing a recent 
study posted on Duke University’s website by three economics professors at Duke 
University. * He also reported results of his own study of study groups in law school, which 
found that if there are large racial preferences, whites and Asians assume that the best 
students to invite into their study groups will be whites and Asians rather than blacks and 
Hispanics. He asserted that study groups are important in law school because they improve 
students’ grade point averages, and that study groups composed only of minority students do 
not improve grades . 16 


4 See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). 

35 Peter Arcidiacono, Shakeeb Khan, and Jacob Vigdor, “Representation versus Assimilation: How do 
Preferences in College Admissions Affect Social Interactions?” November 5, 2007, available at 
http://www.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/knewminisk.pdf (accessed Jan. 23, 2009). 

36 Tr. at 111-12. 





Discussion 


33 


Vice Chair Themstrom observed that Harv ard undergraduate admissions does not give large 
racial preferences, but that before the ban on preferences in California, the racial gaps at 
Berkeley between underrepresented minorities and whites or Asians was enormous. The Vice 
Chair also observ ed that the pool of high-SAT-score underrepresented minorities is small, 
and absorbed by very few schools. 

Commissioner Taylor said he found it disturbing that schools were not communicating 
information about mismatch and its consequences to minority students and their families 
before they determine which college to attend, and how much success they might achieve 
relative to other students. He stated that a student needs to know what the range is at any 
particular school and whether he or she is within that range; if the student is below that range, 
no additional help from the school or anyone else will be sufficient. He emphasized that the 
critical public policy perspective should focus on what will help the minority community to 
do well. 

Professor Sander articulated four policies to address Commissioner Taylor’s points that he 
believed all the panelists would endorse. First, he recommended transparency, meaning that 
African-American or other minority students ought to know before selecting a college what 
the ultimate outcomes have been for students with their credentials. Commissioner Taylor 
asked the panelists whether they would agree with Professor Sander’s first point, and they 
replied affirmatively. Ms. Willner added that she thought the colleges also owed students 
evidence demonstrating that they had given needed help to similar students in the past. 
Commissioner Taylor endorsed this suggestion and pointed out that this information was no 
different than providing prospective athletic students a coach’s track record of success. He 
observ ed that policies of affirmative action had been more concerned with enrolling a target 
number of black and Hispanic students than helping them make sound decisions about the 
best colleges for them as individuals. 

Professor Sander next suggested that colleges be held accountable to all prospective and 
current students, meaning a) they disclose their record of retaining science majors to 
graduation; b) they take responsibility for improving their record; c) they change their 
admissions practices; or d) all of the above. His third suggestion was that college admissions 
emphasize socioeconomic preferences over racial preferences. Lastly, he recommended that 
colleges curtail large mismatches in admissions that have clearly shown negative effects on 
minority students. 

Commissioner Kirsanow asked Professor Sander for his view of the extent of current 
transparency and accountability. Professor Sander stated that on a scale from zero to 100, it 
was a 3. Dr. Tapia agreed that getting such information was extremely difficult, and said the 
recommendation for greatly increased transparency and accountability w^as excellent. He also 
gave examples of successful programs, such as Rice's, that w r ere able to recruit able students 
by word-of-mouth because of a reputation for producing minority successes. He gave as a 
cautionary example a student who told Dr. Tapia that he had been accepted to Princeton with 



34 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. Technology , Engineering & Math Careers 


a 940 combined SAT score, and had been told (and believed) that the average SAT score at 

37 

Princeton was 950. Dr. Tapia said he urged him to check further. 

Commissioner Taylor stated that he strongly opposed any public policy that masked 
discussion of such information, and further, that he believed concealing such information was 
intentional. 

Dr. Elliott agreed that the size and significance of mismatch in schools was hard to obtain, 
and that schools concealed such data in order to meet their quotas or goals for enrolling 
minority students. Vice Chair Themstrom asked whether colleges cared more about showing 
off diversity of their freshman classes than results of such policies in senior year with respect 
to the numbers of minority students in STEM majors. Ms. Willner agreed that letting a 
student in was easy, but should be matched by a college’s willingness to help that student 
succeed. 

Dr. Tapia stated that he visited Berkeley and UCLA frequently and was saddened to see the 
effects of the California ban on racial preferences there, since administrators had made no 
effort to create other programs that would work for minorities, such as the “Ten Percent 
Plan” in Texas. The Texas law requires the flagship campus to accept the top 10 percent of 
students in each Texas high school regardless of SAT scores, which Dr. Tapia believed has 
been successful because the university supports the students in special programs once they 
arrive on campus. 

Vice Chair Themstrom asked Dr. Sander why he thought socioeconomic preferences were 
less likely to result in mismatch than racial preferences. Professor Sander responded that by 
broadening the definition of diversity to include socioeconomic preferences, colleges would 
increase the size of the applicant pool and decrease the size of the mismatch they would have 
to accept. Second, his data indicated to him that credentials more likely understate potential 
in lower socioeconomic status (SES) applicants, and they perform better than expected. 

Third, the resulting smaller gap would not, in his view, create social isolation problems of the 
kind discussed earlier in the hearing. His experience with expanding admissions to include 
low SES at UCLA after Proposition 209 passed in California showed that this approach 
worked. He added that this program was not continued because it didn’t produce enough 
African-American students to satisfy administrators, and that in its place the law school 
started a “Critical Race” program’ s for minority students admitted with large credential gaps. 
Professor Sander stated that the Critical Race program was a subterfuge that produced even 
fewer black law students; during the course of the program, 30 white applicants were denied 


37 Princeton’s current average SAT verbal and math combined score is 1485. See 

http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=4221&profileId=6 (accessed Feb. 24, 
2009). 

One definition is as follows: “Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an intellectual movement of progressive law 
scholars-primarily of color-who view the law as complicitous in sustaining white supremacy, and, by 
extension, upholding similar hierarchies within gender, class, and sexual orientation.” 
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/isaksen24.htm (accessed September 17, 2009). 




Discussion 


35 


entry with Law School Admission Test (LSAT) average scores of 163 and eight black 
applicants were admitted with an LSAT median of 154.^ 

Dr. Tapia inteijected a comment that UCLA law school had produced Johnny Cochran; 
Professor Sander responded that that was an example of entirely race-neutral policies. He 
added that UCLA's preference programs produced great successes for some individuals, but 
large preferences had counterproductive effects. 

Vice Chair Themstrom observed that the Bok and Bowen study was of undergraduate 
admissions only, and that about half the underrepresented minorities had not needed 
preferences. Professor Sander agreed, noting that Barack Obama had not needed preferences. 
Dr. Tapia added that the Bowen and Bok study was limited to African-Americans and did not 
include Hispanics. 

Commissioner Kirsanow asked whether schools are discouraging the participation of Asians, 
who are overrepresented in science programs. Professor Sander said probably not, although 
he hoped to study that issue. Dr. Tapia stated that to the contrary, U.S. Asians are becoming 
underrepresented because of assimilation, and schools are bringing in more foreign-bom 
Asians. Professor Sander disagreed in part, referring to his U.S. Census data that showed 
Asians still hold a large proportion of science doctorates. 

Vice Chair Themstrom asked whether the decreasing portion of Asians in graduate school 
just showed that they were understandably turning to well-paying business careers, as were 
other minorities. Dr. Tapia suggested that they were turning to other careers simply because 
they believed, incorrectly, that a few low grades disqualified them from graduate school. 

Commissioner Yaki observed that it is misleading to consider all Asians as one group, since 
there are great disparities within that group based on assimilation over generations into 
American society and outcome differences between Japanese or Chinese groups and other 
Asians. Both Vice Chair Themstrom and Dr. Tapia agreed. Dr. Tapia stated that a group 
label is also misleading for those considered “Hispanic" since the disparities in outcomes 
within such a group are extreme. He stated also that there have been changes in cultural 
adherence to educational expectations over time within some ethnic groups, resulting in some 
preference for taking well-paying jobs versus aspiring to attend graduate school, or, in other 
cases, reduced educational aspirations. 

Commissioner Yaki also claimed that since the passage of Proposition 209, the University of 
California system is accepting foreign Asian students who pay full tuition as a means of 
avoiding payment of subsidies that accompany in-state students. Professor Sander agreed that 
the University of California is attempting to maximize its tuition revenues but asserted also 
that the poorest students in the Los Angeles area are in fact Cambodian, not black or 
Hispanic. 


39 This represents about a one standard deviation gap in the LSAT. 




36 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Vice Chair Themstrom stated that it is not clearly in the public interest that students enter 
graduate programs instead of the business world. Dr. Tapia agreed, but asserted that it is bad 
for University of California and Ivy League math departments to have no African- 
Americans. 

Commissioner Kirsanow asked Professor Sander to what degree the mismatch in STEM 
disciplines differed from the mismatch in other disciplines, such as law. Professor Sander 
answered that the STEM mismatch gap at the undergraduate level is uniquely problematic as 
a result of the linear sequence required for science and math courses, and the impossibility of 
watering down the required curriculum to push students through to graduation. He observed 
that law is similar in that it requires bar passage, whereas the academic discipline of English, 
in his opinion, has no good outcome measures. 

Dr. Tapia added that as a result of his frequent work with lawyers as an expert witness in 
federal court trials, he viewed law and science differently. He claimed that creativity was not 
a necessary part of success as a lawyer, whereas it is for STEM graduates. 

Commissioner Yaki observed that Professor Sander had narrowed his definition of mismatch 
and that the gap may be due to factors not discussed in this briefing. He also stated that 
affirmative action in higher education, characterized by Professor Sander as dying, was 
instead being killed by initiatives across the country. Commissioner Yaki also stated that 
although he was not criticizing the panelists who were in attendance, he did not believe that 
they represented a balanced panel on the subject. He further indicated that he was glad that 
panelist Hazel O’Leary (President of Fisk University and former Secretary of Energy), who 
had accepted an invitation to participate in the briefing (possibly to speak about the role of 
HBCUs in STEM) and then cancelled, was not attending this briefing. He stated that the 
easier accessibility of HBCUs was used as an excuse for doing away with affirmative action, 
and noted that Dr. Tapia had testified that the HBCUs were insufficient with regard to STEM 
graduates. Commissioner Yaki stated that affirmative action is about measuring potential, 
and that closing off access to selective research universities because of statistics would not be 
acceptable. The briefing then ended. 



Statements 


37 


Statements 


(Note: Statements are unedited by the Commission and are the sole work of the author. 
Professor Sander submitted slides in lieu of a written statement that are appended to the 
summary of his testimony, supra.) 

Richard Tapia 

The Flaws in the Mismatch Theory 

Picture the nation's research universities in the mid-1960s. Legal and discriminatory 
obstructions had allowed only a very few underrepresented minorities to gain admission to 
the nation's top science and engineering institutions. For instance, until 1964. when its board 
petitioned the courts for a change of its charter. Rice University had been constrained to 
educate only the "white inhabitants of Houston and Texas.’' Raymond Johnson then became 
the first African-American student admitted to Rice and went on to earn his Ph.D. in 
mathematics in 1969. 

His Rice Ph.D. launched a very successful career, including the chairmanship of the 
Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland. Stories of early minority 
scientists and mathematicians produced in this country are amazing, but reflect a truly sad 
component in our educational history. The few that were produced in those early times 
invariably were so brilliant with so much potential in their fields that someone in their 
department would champion their admission, and of course these students were quite 
successful. But what about all of the other minorities who could have made it, yet had no 
champions? Certainly this has been a great loss to the country’s productivity and leadership. 

In the mid-1960s, affirmative action was bom. America’s universities began to use 
affirmative action policies to increase the participation of minority groups in higher 
education. Designed to level the playing field, university admissions policies attempted to 
normalize for differences in the quality of academic preparation. Admissions criteria were 
developed to identify students with the capacity to succeed but who were not identified 
through traditional admissions criteria. Yet these policies have been controversial throughout 
their history and have faced repeated legal challenges—with much of the controversy 
centering on whether affirmative action is reverse discrimination and unfair to white students 
rejected in favor of minority applicants who are perceived as “less qualified." 

Recent controversy about the fairness of affirmative action now raises a very different 
question. Some are now claiming that affirmative action policies can be unfair to the 
minority students that they are intended to help. The current “Mismatch Theory," promoted 



38 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


by Panelists Rogers Elliott 40 and Richard Sander 41 , suggests that minority students are more 
likely to leave science and engineering when affirmative action has placed them into colleges 
for which they are not prepared. They contrast this failure with the success that 
underrepresented minority students experience at less rigorous schools, especially at 
Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and suggest that minority students would be better 
served by attending less competitive schools where they can be more successful. 

It is clear that what many, including several of my colleagues who are underrepresented 
minorities, want is a strong refutation of the Mismatch Theory as a whole—that it is totally 
wrong with no foundation or no basis. I claim that the Mismatch Theory is terribly flawed, 
that it could set underrepresented minorities back 40 years in science participation and 
achievements, but its flaw is not in its data but in the conclusions drawn by Professors Elliott 
and Sander. The mismatch theorists have focused light on a huge problem that I have been 
fighting at Rice for 20 years. The data they present are entirely credible to me because they 
reflect what I have seen at Rice. So I do not dispute the data. It is the recommendations they 
make based upon the data that are terribly flawed. 

I should explain why I believe that I was asked to serve on this panel. I have been a 
mathematician at Rice University since 1970. I received a B.A. in mathematics from UCLA 
in 1961, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA in 1967. I have received numerous awards 
for my accomplishments as a mathematician: I was elected to the National Academy of 
Engineering, appointed to the National Science Board by President Clinton, and at Rice 
University promoted to the position of University Professor, of which there have been only 
six named in the history of the university. Upon first glance this appears to look like any 
traditional academic path to success. We make all kinds of assumptions about the 
background of such individuals, including the certainty and predictability of the path to 
success. In my case, most of those assumptions would be wrong. 

I was bom in Los Angeles to parents who immigrated from Mexico. I attended a below- 
average high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I was not directed to college 
by my teachers or counselors although I had demonstrated strong mathematical talent. I 
started to work at a muffler factory where a co-worker recognized my talent and daily 
insisted that I go to college. I often think of how different my life would have been if this 
hadn’t happened. I was very fortunate. I began at community college, where I was strongly 
directed to UCLA, and away from less selective four-year colleges, by two of my community 
college math professors. Little did I know that this advice would be critical to my career. I 
went on to get a Ph.D. because I saw other students with less mathematical talent than I had 
who were going on and felt that if they could, I could too. 


40 

Elliott, Rogers, et al. “The Role of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective 
Universities.” Research in Higher Education. Vol. 37, No. 6 (1996). 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/1662845727427n33/ 

41 

Sander, Richard, 2005. “A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools,” Stanford 
Law Review 57 (2) 367-484. 




Statements 


39 


After receiving my Ph.D. from UCLA. I was directed and guided by David Sanchez, the only 
underrepresented minority faculty member in the UCLA Mathematics Department, to faculty 
positions at Wisconsin, Stanford, and Rice. This interv ention and guidance was probably the 
most important in my entire professional life. At many junctures, my life could have taken a 
very different path rather than to University Professor. Like so many I could have easily 
fallen through the many dangerously wide cracks. I owe my success to my education at a 
research university. While at Rice, I have serv ed as dissertation director or co-director for 
many successful minority doctoral recipients in science, technology, engineering, and 
mathematics (STEM). Some of them, perhaps most of them, would fit the pattern of the 
Mismatch Theory, entering Rice less prepared than the majority of their fellow Rice students. 
Also, I have taught many underrepresented minority Rice undergraduates, and again, some, 
perhaps most, fit the pattern of the Mismatch Theory'. Over the years. I have been frustrated 
at the number of Rice's underrepresented minority students who migrate from science and 
engineering to humanities or social sciences, where they have experienced more success. 

Selective research universities recruit some of the nation's most capable minority students, 
who enter intending to pursue a career in science or engineering, and then lose 
disproportionate numbers of them to other disciplines. I agree with Sander and Elliott that 
admission of minority students without retention is of negative value. This is what I have, for 
years, called the “loss of the precious few.” Where I strongly part with Sander and Elliott is 
in what we should do about it. Sander and Elliott say that we should steer students to less 
challenging schools where they are more successful. According to them, this will be better 
for the students and better for the nation because it will increase the numbers of 
underrepresented minority students receiving degrees in science and engineering. I say we 
should insist that elite research universities put into place programs that have proven 
successful at supporting students so that they are successful. Simply stated, in a “sink or 
swim,” non-mentoring, non-supportive environment, which is what we see at many of our 
elite research schools, those with poorer preparation will rarely succeed, minority or 
majority. Why are we not demanding from public and private universities that receive federal 
funds that which is critical for the health of the nation—quality education of all our citizens? 
Why are we letting them off the hook as they conveniently build an ever increasing base of 
foreign STEM graduate students and faculty^'? 

Creating a Permanent Underclass 

What is wrong with Sander’s and Elliott's resolution of this problem? Why do I find it a huge 
mistake? In my opinion, nothing can do more to establish minorities as a permanent 
underclass in science and engineering than this. 

If the goal is just to produce larger numbers of underrepresented minority scientists, then the 
Mismatch Theory is a great idea, but numbers of degrees alone are not a good measure of 
success. Underrepresented minorities must be competitive with the overall population; how 
else can we break the stereotype? The distribution cannot be skewed toward weaker schools. 
Steering minorities to lesser schools reminds us of the separate but equal mantra. It turns out 


42 Tapia. Richard A. "True Diversity Doesn't Come From Abroad." Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B34. 
September 28, 2007. 




40 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


that separate but equal is always separate, but never equal. But this is worse. This assumes 
from the start separate and weaker. This would take us back to the pre- to mid-60s, where 
only the very rare minority student who has been prepared well and tests well under 
traditional admissions criteria would be admitted to the nation’s research institutions. 

Race and ethnicity should not dictate educational destiny. Steering capable students to lesser 
schools puts a cap on their potential achievements. Top research universities choose faculty 
from Ph.D.s produced at top research universities. If we underrepresented minorities are ever 
to be an equitable presence as faculty at our top-level schools, then our students must be 
schooled at those same institutions. Leadership in science and engineering comes from top 
research institutions. MSIs do some things very well. Their students speak warmly of how 
confident and supported they felt in their experiences there. Research universities should 
learn from them how to nurture that kind of confidence, but Ph.D.s produced at MSIs will not 
become faculty at top research universities. We need minorities who will become national 
STEM leaders, and these have to be produced by institutions that are recognized as giving 
credibility to the scientific accomplishments of the individual. 

Below is a list, which is not exhaustive, that I quickly generated with a few examples of 
people that I know who received their Ph.D. in science or engineering from an elite research 
school and who have gone on to assume national scientific leadership. 

National Leaders in Science and Mathematics who are Underrepresented Minorities 


Name 

Ph.D. 

Current Leadership Position 

African-A m erica ns 

Shirley Ann Jackson 

MIT 

President, RPI 

Freeman Hrabowski 

Illinois 

President, University of Maryland Baltimore Co. 

Shirley Malcom 

Washington 

Head of Education Programs, AAAS 

William Massey 

Stanford 

Professor, Princeton 

Arlie Petters 

MIT/Princeton 

Professor, Duke 

Sylvester Gates 

MIT 

Professor, Maryland 

Mexican-A meric arts 
Hector Ruiz 

Rice 

Director, Center for String and Particle Theory 

Executive Chairman of AMD 

Rodrigo Banuelos 

UCLA 

Head, Mathematics, Purdue 

Francisco Cigarroa 

UT/Harvard 

President, UT Health Science Center, S. Antonio 

Richard Tapia 

UCLA 

University Professor, Rice University 

Carlos Castillo-Chavez Wisconsin 

Regent Professor, Arizona State 


Where is the list of individuals with Ph.D.s from lesser universities who have outstanding 
scientific accomplishments or outstanding scientific leadership accomplishments? 






Statements 


41 


The Systems Are Broken 

Consider three systems that prepare minority students: A) K-12 schools. B) MSIs. and C) 
research institutions. For very different reasons, none of these adequately promotes equitable 
representation in science and engineering. But consider, which problem is easier to solve? 

A. Transform urban K-12 schools that educate the vast majority of underrepresented 
students so that they prepare students equally to the best K-12 schools, 

B. Bring MSIs up to the academic excellence of research institutions so that capable 
minority graduates will be competitive with students from elite schools in the 
industrial job market, professional leadership positions and graduate and professional 
school, or 

C. Design and implement programs at the most selective research universities so that 
capable minority students have the same retention rates and confidence levels in 
science and engineering as those at minority serv ing institutions. 

Clearly C has the most viable solution. A by-product of this solution is the added bonus of 
enhanced training and opportunities and a greater likelihood of ascending to leadership 
positions. It has taken more than a century to build the sophisticated machinery of research 
universities. 

So What Do We Do Now? 

Solving the three problems described in A, B. and C above would require a giant overhaul of 
the entire systems. While we should keep such an objective in view, we cannot wait for this 
change. There are things that we can do short term that I believe will have a significant 
impact on improving the representation of underrepresented minorities in STEM careers and 
leadership positions across the full spectrum of opportunities. My recommendations are as 
follows. 

Recommendation for Dealing with Problem A 

Talented underrepresented minorities should be identified early in their education 
(elementary and middle school) and motivated and directed to attend the best magnet 
secondary schools in the city. This activity would involve working with the parents and the 
school districts to facilitate and implement these plans. This recommendation has been 
influenced by the following experience. At the present time at Rice University I am working 
with three outstanding minority Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and in computer science. 

All three have distinguished themselves in their research and in their academic 
accomplishments, including being awarded prestigious National Science Foundation 
graduate fellowships. Two are African-American and one is Mexican-American. All three 
were bom and raised in the minority areas of large U.S. cities. However, each was directed to 
a STEM magnet school in their city, performed well, and was encouraged to apply to 
selective research universities for undergraduate training. All three attended Rice as 
undergraduates, where I met them and encouraged them to attend graduate school (not 
necessarily Rice). They received excellent high school and undergraduate preparation and are 




42 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


now outstanding graduate students. I expect to hear in the somewhat near future that they are 
excellent STEM faculty at research universities in the country. 

Recommendation for Dealing with Problem B 

Many MSIs are open admissions (all who apply are admitted) and also try to be all things to 
all people. I have a colleague who teaches chemistry at a local Historically Black College and 
University. He says that in his introductory classes he has some outstanding students and 
some students who are extremely poorly prepared, and that there is no way that he can do 
justice to either group of students when they are all in the same class. His level of frustration 
is extremely high. I recommend that MSIs adopt a magnet secondary school format. They 
should develop excellent undergraduate courses in selected disciplines and only allow 
selected, well-prepared students to take these classes. In this way the best students will be 
well prepared for graduate work in the appropriate discipline at a research university. The 
details involved in implementing this suggestion would require more thought, but I believe 
that the direction is correct. 

Recommendation for Dealing with Problem C 

The challenge is to admit underrepresented minority students in larger numbers in science 
and engineering at the nation’s research institutions and then support them to be successful. 
The research schools must be held accountable for both admission and retention of minority 
students in their chosen disciplines through the completion of their degrees. 

To address admissions, we must evaluate our admissions criteria. I refer to this as second 
stage affirmative action. Is it excluding individuals with talent to succeed? At Rice, in both 
graduate and undergraduate admissions, we have successfully turned to what I call the 
Threshold Approach. We pick a threshold level at which students will be successful that has 
been determined from years of experience of working with all students. Actually the 
threshold level is a fuzzy interval of scores. Those students with scores significantly above 
the threshold are deemed equivalent as far as the test score goes, and the score is dismissed 
and admission decisions are guided by other factors. Students with scores significantly below 
the threshold value are not accepted, and those students with scores near the threshold value 
are looked at with extra care. My experience has been that there is no predictive value at the 
high end of the test score. For example, there is essentially no value in favoring a student 
with a combined SAT score of 1500 over one with a combined score of, say, 1300. 

The same can be said for a graduate student whose GRE score is in the 95th percentile versus 
one whose GRE score is only in the 85th percentile. However, I have never seen an 
undergraduate student at Rice succeed in math, science, or engineering with a combined SAT 
score below 900.That is, there is much more predictive information at the low end of the 
scale than there is at the high end of the scale. Indeed, each year Rice rejects a good number 
(say five or so) of undergraduate applicants who have earned perfect 1600 SAT scores. Of 
course, the Rice admissions officers feel that some of the high-scoring SAT students were 
lacking in other significant evaluation components. The misuse of standardized test scores, 
guided by the belief that there is predictive power at the upper level of the scale, is one of the 
worst enemies of underrepresented minorities. I have seen underrepresented minority 
students graduate from Rice with honors, and yet they entered with modest SAT scores, 



Statements 


43 


albeit, the highest scores in their minority school. At Rice this is particularly true of Hispanic 
women. 

Following these guidelines, we have produced a very large number, probably the largest 
number in the country, of underrepresented minority doctoral recipients in mathematics, 
science, and engineering. In the last 10 years approximately 1,000 STEM Ph.D.s have been 
produced in the country, and Rice has produced more than 60 of these doctoral students. One 
year the National Science Foundation informed Rice that in that year we had produced 
approximately half of the nation’s doctoral recipients in the mathematical sciences. The 
Mathematics Departments at the University of Iowa, through the leadership of David 
Mandersheid. Cornell University, and Arizona State also have good Ph.D. productivity rates 
for underrepresented minorities in mathematics; in the latter two situations the champion has 
been Carlo Castillo-Chavez. Again, success comes from strong commitment, aggressive 
support, and a champion. These successes demonstrate that it is possible to produce minority 
Ph.D.s at a high rate at research universities. We now offer a success at the undergraduate 
level, as well. Due to the Texas Top 10% Rule 4 ', the Mathematics Department at the 
University of Texas Austin has the highest percentage of underrepresented minority 
undergraduate mathematics majors (nearly 30%) of any research university in the country. 
With innovative support programs they retain minority students through graduation at a rate 
above the majority student rate. 

My summarizing point here is that underrepresented minorities need not be sent to MSIs to 
succeed. With support and caring we can succeed at the best schools in the country. Indeed, 
many of us have. And more of us will. 

The Consequence of the Mismatch Theory 

I suspect that many faculty and administrators from research universities would breathe a big 
sigh of relief when they read about the Mismatch Theory. It certainly lets them off the hook, 
doesn’t it? What it does is reduce expectations and set the country’s research institutions 
back to pre-1964. It ignores all that we have learned about educating minorities and 
guarantees the formation of a permanent science underclass in America. A two-tiered 
America is certainly not healthy for the country. 


43 Created to avoid the impact of Hopwood v. Texas, the case banning the use of race as a factor in admissions. 
1997’s Texas House Bill 588, guarantees Texas students who graduate in the top ten percent of their high 
school class automatic admission to all state-funded universities. 








44 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Rogers Elliott 


(Note: Professor Elliott submitted the following article in lieu of a written statement, which 
may also be found at http://www.seaphe.org/pdf/elliott-ethnicity.pdf (accessed July 27, 

2010). It is reprinted by permission of the copyright holder.) 

The Role Of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science In Highly Selective Institutions 

From Research in Higher Education, Vol. 37, No. 6, 1996 

Authors: Rogers Elliott, A. Christopher Strenta, Russell Adair, Michael Matier, and Jannah Scott 

(Foreword: This study sought to assess the role of ethnicity in both initial choice of, and persistence 
in, science majors. Standardized test scores, high school records, initial concentration preference, 
college grades, and final majors of all the white, Asian, black, and Hispanic students who enrolled 
in 1988 at four highly selective institutions provided the database. Despite relative deficits in 
scores on measures of preparation and developed ability, blacks entered college with a strong 
interest in majoring in science. Black students interested in science also suffered the highest 
attrition from it; Asians were lowest, with whites and Hispanics near the average attrition of 40%. 
Ethnicity’ did not add significantly to ability and achievement variables in predicting attrition from 
science. The results are discussed in terms of two main issues: first, the effect of different 
standards of selection for the various groups on their success in science curricula; and second, 
the relevance of various well-known intervention strategies to the problems of minority attrition in 
science in highly selective institutions.) 

The question of why much larger proportions of non-Asian minorities leave the science 
pipeline than do whites or Asians has long concerned all persons and organizations 
interested in the vitality of science and in equality of opportunity to become a scientist. 
Science is a rewarding career for those inclined to pursue it, and many of the world's serious 
problems cannot be solved without science and technology. If large pools of potential 
scientists are being shut out by action of educational institutions themselves, that fact needs 
to be known, and the problem needs to be described and examined, so that effective amelio¬ 
rative policies might be devised. 

Our first reports (Strenta et al., 1993, 1994) concerned general issues about choice of, 
persistence in, and attrition from science, along with the way gender affected those issues in 
our population. Here we will examine these questions with respect to ethnicity. 1 Our 
strategy and goal is as it was with gender: to describe and analyze the predictors of initial 
interest in science, and then the predictors of persistence in science—that is, actually 
majoring in science—in terms of variables measuring intellectual achievement and 
developed ability. 

The situation with respect to minorities differs from that for women very likely in several 
ways, but surely in one important respect: minorities are at least as interested in pursuing 
science as whites (Astin and Astin, 1993; National Science Board, 1993; White, 1992), and 
the attitude toward science, at least for African-Americans, is very positive—more positive, 



Statements 


45 


other things being equal, than that of whites (Dunteman, Wisenbaker, and Taylor, 1979; see 
also citations in Oakes, 1990). In large unselected samples of college-bound students, just 
about a fifth of the whites, blacks, and Hispanics taking the SAT or filling out a student 
information form in their first college term intended to major in science or engineering 
(College Board, 1988a, or any recent year; National Science Board, 1993), with whites 
being slightly lower in rate of interest than blacks or Hispanics; over a third of Asians 
intended to major in science. In the somewhat more selective longitudinal sample reported 
by Astin and Astin (1993), the rates of initial interest were higher but in similar ethnic 
order: Asians, 53%; whites, 27%; Hispanics (Chicanos), 36%; and blacks, 34%. 

Recent accounts (Oakes, 1990; Suter, 1993; White, 1992) of race, ethnicity, and science 
make it clear that non-Asian minorities are relatively low on most measures of preparation 
and developed ability, and that these deficits begin early in their schooling careers. They 
are considerable just before the point of entrance to college. Both the average SAT 
mathematics (SATM) scores and the math and science proficiencies of twelfth-grade blacks 
are about a standard deviation (S.D.) behind, and those of Hispanics are about .75 S.D. 
behind, those of whites (Suter, 1993). Thus, black grade 12 achievement in math is about the 
same as, and in science a little worse than, white grade 8 achievement. And while blacks 
and Hispanics are a little closer to whites on scores on College Board Achievement Tests 
and Advanced Placement (AP) tests, that is in part because very small and selected 
proportions of those minority groups take such tests (White, 1992). 

Partly for these reasons, not many minority students actually enter science in higher 
education, and many who do drop out along the way. White (1992) and the National 
Science Board (1993) have reported that blacks received about 5.3% of the bachelor's 
degrees in science in 1989 and 1991, though they constituted about 13% of the population and 
about 9% of the higher education enrollment; Hispanics, who were about 7% of the general 
population, and 5% of the higher education enrollment, had 4% of the science degrees. 

Asians (9%) and whites (82%) together had 91% of the science baccalaureates given in 
1991, with Asians obviously greatly overrepresented. 

The recent study by Astin and Astin (1993) illustrates the disproportionately large losses of 
blacks and Hispanics (in their case, Chicanos). The final pool of blacks in science was only 
47% of the size of the pool of those initially intending to major in science, and of Hispanics 
only 37%, whereas the corresponding percentages for Asians and whites were 68% and 61%, 
respectively (all these figures are overestimates of persistence rates, because there was some 
recruitment from nonscience pools into science). This result occurred even though in the 
original pools of those initially interested in science and engineering as freshmen, as shown 
above, blacks and Hispanics had just over a third of their numbers declaring initial interest in 
science majors and were 7-8% more likely to do so than whites. Other large and possibly 
more representative samples (National Science Foundation, 1990) have found persistence 
rates of only 21% for minorities, compared with 43% for majority students. And Hilton, 
Hsia, Solorzano, and Benton (1989) reported persistence rates for the high school and beyond 
database (high school seniors who had intended to go to college and major in science or 
engineering and who were in college still doing or intending to do science 2 years after 
graduation) as 54% for Asians, 44% for whites, 36% for blacks, and 29% for Latinos; 
considering only those students who had actually gotten to college and remained there, the 




46 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


corresponding rates were 61%, 58%, 54%, and 48%. Finally, in Phillips's recent report (1991) 
of a large representative sample of engineering students from predominantly white schools, 
the 5-year graduation rates were as follows: for whites, 67%; for Hispanics, 47%; and for 
blacks, 36%. 

Rates of persistence depend on its definition—they are lower measured in the senior than 
in the sophomore year of college, and lower in less selective pools—but it appears that of 
students who actually begin their first year in college and intend a science major, Asians 
will have the highest proportion, they will be best prepared (White, 1992), and they will 
persist most strongly; whites will have the lowest proportion of students interested in 
science, but those will be well prepared and about as highly persistent; blacks will be 
strongly represented in initial interest, but they will be the least well prepared and over half 
will leave science; and Hispanics" will be represented as much as, and a little better prepared 
than, blacks, but slightly more likely to drop out. 

There is some evidence, however, indicating very substantial persistence rates among 
non-Asian minority students. Hilton et al. (1989), studying gifted (i.e., SATM scores of 550 
or more) students interested in science, found that the persistence of non-Asian minority 
students in math and science fields in (usually) the spring of their second year beyond high 
school was higher than that of matched whites (61% vs. 55%). Because the black and Hispanic 
samples of this study were, like our own, highly selected, we will have more to say about 
them below; but the study certainly supports the view that equally developed ability among 
students interested in science predicts equal persistence, regardless of ethnic or racial 
affiliation. Finally, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have a strong record 
of B.S. (and, later, science Ph.D.) production, more so than more elite, predominantly 
white institutions (Culotta, 1992; Thurgood and Clarke, 1995), despite student bodies that 
are on average much less well prepared than black students in elite institutions. 

This last fact makes clear that persistence is not just a matter of average preparation, but of 
competitive position as well: a reasonably well-prepared student at an HBCU who would be 
in a strong competitive position in his or her institution would be in a far less strong one at an 
elite institution. The context forjudging equality of developed ability is at least as salient 
within institutions as between them. At white-majority institutions non-Asian minorities are, 
by virtue of race-preferential admission policies, at an often serious disadvantage with 
respect to validly predictive indices of talent, and if equally developed ability predicts equal 
persistence, unequally developed ability should predict differential persistence. For example, 
Ramist, Lewis, and McCamley-Jenkins (1994) have shown that for thousands of students in 
various racial and ethnic categories, from dozens of predominantly white institutions of 
higher learning, blacks averaged nearly 100 points and Hispanics nearly 50 points lower 
than whites in SATM, a strong predictor of science and math performance (Astin and 
Astin, 1993; Ramist, Lewis, and McCamley-Jenkins, 1994; Strenta et al., 1993), and the 
differences were larger for more selective schools. Since the standard deviation of SATM 
within their institutions was 85 to 90 points (and less than that in highly selective 
institutions), these are substantial differences. 



Statements 


47 


Not only SATM but other preadmission indicators (SATV, high school grades, 
achievement tests) are significant predictors of success in science courses. Basic science 
courses are difficult, fast-paced, impersonal, and competitive (Hewitt and Seymour, 1991: 
Manis et al., 1989; Tobias, 1990), and the more selective the school, the more this is likely to 
be the case. Science is also hierarchical, so that relative failure at the basic levels is not only 
discouraging but to some extent incapacitating for the next courses. We would expect, for the 
foregoing reasons, that the relative deficit in preparation and ability-achievement measures 
of the black and Hispanic students who go to very selective and predominantly white schools 
will be especially damaging to their prospects in science. There have been dozens of studies 
showing associations between ethnic differences in SAT scores and corresponding 
differences in college grades. We know of none, however, in which both the high school 
and college grades of different ethnic groups have been separated into science and nonscience 
categories for differential prediction of science-relevant outcomes. Such a level of analysis is 
important, we think, to a more complete understanding of differential persistence in science. 

It is sometimes alleged that predominantly white institutions are difficult for blacks and 
Hispanics to deal with for reasons that go beyond achievement and ability. In a recent 
special report on minorities in science (Gibbons. 1992, p. 1194), Treisman is quoted as 
follows: "There is a belief that [minority] kids that are strong will make it anyway. In fact, 
national data show that's false. If you control for socio-economic background and class 
rank in high school, black kids still do less well than nonminorities. These [lower 
performances] are measures of institutional inhospitalitv." The controls Treisman mentions, 
however, do not control for SAT total scores: matching on parental income or education 
preserves from 75% to 90% of the mean black-white population difference of about 200 
points on SAT (e.g., College Board. 1988a). High school grades are moderately correlated with 
SAT scores (about r = .55 in the whole population, and less in selective schools; see Ramist, 
1984; Ramist et al., 1994; Strenta et al., 1993). However. SAT scores contribute more to the 
prediction of individual course grades, especially at selective colleges, than do high school 
grades (Ramist et al., 1994). In the Ramist et al. sample, blacks were only .36 S.D. lower than 
whites in high school grades, and Hispanics were actually slightly higher than whites, which 
means that with respect to freshman grade-point average, on which those groups were .7 and .4 
S.D.s lower than whites, both groups were greatly overpredicted by high school grades. (They 
were overpredicted by the SAT as well, but only by about half as much.) 

A test of whether there is an "inhospitality" effect or any other ethnic effect is to use a 
regression analysis of persistence with ethnicity as a predictor, along with high school grades 
and test scores—if there is no ethnicity effect, there is nothing to explain in terms that go 
beyond the preadmission measures. Both Hilton et al. (1989) and Astin and Astin (1993) 
have done such analyses, with no reported ethnic effects, but their students were attending 
an enormous number and variety of institutions. We wished to study institutions that were 
very much alike in being high in selectivity and high in the production of scientists and 
science practitioners. We have chosen for study four Ivy League schools that are so similar 
in admission practices and academic standards that they may be treated, as we do here, as 
one superinstitution with four campuses. 






48 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


The group of students we are investigating here, especially those initially interested in 
science, is obviously representative of students in highly selective private research 
universities, of which the present four are a part. These four alone are collectively an 
important producer of scientists, even though the 1,625 science majors in this group represent 
only 1% of the total science B.A. degrees given by U.S. institutions (National Science Board, 
1993: about 165,000 degrees in natural sciences, math and computer science, and 
engineering were conferred in 1991, or about a sixth of all baccalaureates). But however 
highly selected these students are, and however elite their institutions, we think that they are 
not very different from natural science and engineering majors at other selective colleges or 
public research universities. There are some 30 private universities and technical schools 
with average SAT totals of about 1,200 or more, and about 25 smaller colleges that are 
similarly selective. We believe that 8-9% of the total science degrees is a reasonable 
estimate of their production. 

There are at least 15 great public research universities, where the culture, curricula, and 
standards of high-level science are similar to those that prevail in the ones we are 
investigating here. Though they are less selective overall than the highly selective private 
universities, they are closer to them in science than in other areas, because the degree of 
selection for developed ability in the science departments of selective public research 
universities is severe: smaller proportions of students enter such institutions initially interested in 
science, and persistence rates are lower (see the review in Strenta et al., 1993). But the select 
few who remain include many very talented students. Thus, for example, Humphreys and 
Freeland (1992) have shown that the SAT scores for four successive groups entering the UC 
Berkeley School of Engineering are very close to the average for the engineering schools 
or departments of the group of schools we are studying (Strenta et al., 1994). These public 
universities are huge by private standards, a fact that offsets to some extent the smaller 
proportions of science concentrators in them. We assume that they give at least another 10- 
12% of the total of science degrees. Finally, we assume that these degrees represent the 
best of science education of students in the high end of the ability range, so that the roughly 
20% under discussion will constitute a far larger percentage of postbaccalaureate science, 
engineering, and medical students. 

In short, though our argument rests heavily on plausibility grounds, we would not expect 
the major factors affecting choice of and persistence in science to be very different at such 
public research universities as Washington, Michigan, Berkeley, Illinois, San Diego, Texas, 
UCLA, Wisconsin, Virginia, or North Carolina than they are at Rice, Stanford, Notre Dame, 
Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Tufts, Georgetown, Camegie-Mellon, Washington University, 
or Johns Hopkins. Chipman and Thomas (1987, p. 425), noting that high-ability students 
were not much studied, went on: "Yet they are the population of real interest with respect to 
participation in mathematics and science. It would be particularly important to study minority 
students of high ability." That is what we do here. 

METHOD 

Subjects 

In 1988 an average of about 13,000 students applied to each of the four highly selective 
institutions whose data are combined here for analysis. These institutions accepted between a 



Statements 


49 


fifth to a quarter of them, and matriculated about half of those. The population of students 
under investigation was thus highly selected by the institutions, and also highly self- 
selected in applying. 

With respect to the four ethnic groups targeted here for study, an average of 8,250 whites, 
averaging a total SAT of 1,268, applied to each institution; 22% were selected, yielding a 
group of white matriculants with an average SAT of 1,325. Similarly, an average of 735 black 
students applied to each institution, averaging a SAT score of 1,089; 35% of them were 
selected, with a resulting group of matriculants having an average SAT of 1,160. Of the 
1.620 Asian applicants per institution, with an average SAT of 1281, 23% were selected, 
producing a matriculant group averaging 1,345; and of the 490 Hispanic applicants per 
institution (SAT = 1,152), 29% were selected, resulting in a matriculant group with a 1,219 
average SAT. The matriculant groups averaged 410 points above their respective population 
1987-88 SAT means, ranging from 390 for whites to 425 for blacks. 

Measures 

The basic data came from high school transcripts, admissions office data, and college 
transcripts through June 1992. We employed the following pre-matriculation measures in 
many of our analyses: SAT verbal score and SAT math score (SATV and SATM); the 
average of the best three achievement tests (ACH); the number of high school science and 
mathematics courses (NSCI); average grade earned in these courses (HSSCI); average grade 
in high school nonscience courses (HSNON); stated initial interest (INT) in a major (the first 
stated if more than one), coded 0 for nonscience and 1 for science, where science is 
defined as natural science and engineering. Students who were undecided or wrote nothing 
were classified as nonscience. Other prematriculation measures occasionally employed were 
the standard measures used by admission departments: the high school percentile rank in 
class converted to a normal deviate with mean 500 and standard deviation 100 (CRS, or 
converted rank score), and the Academic Index (AI), which is one-tenth the sum of (a) the 
average of the two SAT scores (e.g., 670), (b) the ACH (e.g., 680), and (c) the CRS (e.g., 

690 for someone who was third in a class of 100); in the examples, the AI would be 204. 
Finally, we coded participation and performance in high school science courses. 

College performance measures included the grade-point average for science and mathematics 
courses taken during the first 2 years (SGPA), the counterpart measure for nonscience courses 
(NGPA), and the broad area of actual concentration (MAJ, coded, like INT, as 0 or 1 for 
nonscience and science, respectively). Other measures occasionally used were the yearly 
and cumulative GPAs. 

We were conservative in what we classified as science, not including history of science, 
cognitive science, psychology, environmental science, science and ethics, biology and 
society, or other interdisciplinary concentrations, which were placed into social science 
(usually) or humanities as seemed most appropriate. We were interested in analyzing 
science concentrations like those that are traditionally part of natural science divisions: 
hierarchical, laboratory-based disciplines with several prerequisites, usually including many 
mathematics courses, and usually with heavy workloads and frequent assignments. 




50 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology , Engineering & Math Careers 


RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 
Preparation 

The top panel of Table 1 shows the percentage of each group that took the indicated 
Advanced Preparation (AP) science course, and the average group grade for each course. 
The most frequently recorded course was AP Biology, closely followed by AP Chemistry; 
AP Physics and AP Calculus BC were substantially less often chosen. With but three 
exceptions for grades and one for percent participation, the order of grades and participation 
was Asian, white, Hispanic, and black. Regardless of these differences, the overall participation 
in advanced high school science courses was well above the national average (College 
Board, 1988b). Group differences on these variables, as on those of the lower panel, were 
highly significant, which simply means that much of the effect of ethnicity occurred prior to 
college matriculation. We take such differences into account in examining whether there 
were further ethnic effects during college. 

The bottom panel of Table 1 shows the values of the preadmission variables used in various 
analyses. Most of the preadmission data are standard, but we have included as a variable 
the number of science and math courses (NSCI), and disaggregated the overall high school 
GPA into science (HSSCI) and non-science (HSNON) components. The standard predictors, 
SATM, SATV, and Achievement Test average (ACH), are shown in rows 4-6; as noted, 
these, along with high school record, make up the Academic Index (A1—shown in row 7), 
which is the chief predictor of grades used by the admission departments of these schools. 
In this population, AI correlated r = .50 with first-year GPA, and .45 and .46, respectively, 
with NGPA (the average grade in courses outside the science division in the first 2 years) and 
SGPA (the average grade in science division courses in the first 2 years). The eighth row 
indicates the percentage of each group that expressed an intention to major in science or 
engineering. 

These credentials shown in the bottom panel are the ones that admissions officers look at, 
and they manifested extensive course work in science and math, very good high school 
grades, and high scores on standardized tests. As the introduction and the AP science course 
data suggest, the Asian students showed the greatest preparation and the most highly 
developed ability, especially with respect to science-related scores, averaging just over a 
third of an S.D. above the general average on those. Asians and whites together constituted 
about 77% of the students who were initially interested (and 82% of the students who 
finally majored) in science, with blacks and Hispanics together making up about 11% of 
those interested (and 7% of those who finally majored) in science. (The remainder was made 
up predominantly of foreign students, many of them Asian, and students of unknown 
ethnicity, many of them white.) From the point of view of the non-Asian minorities, then. 



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totals are weighed. Ns listed are maxima; some data are missing in every cell. 
























52 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


their colleagues and competitors in science classes were overwhelmingly whites and Asians, 
and we take the combined white-Asian mean as the reference for non-Asian minority disad¬ 
vantage in preadmission and college performance variables. 

For blacks, that disadvantage was a third of an S.D. in number of high school science courses 
taken (NSCI), and four-fifths of an S.D. in high school science grades (HSSCI). On SATM, 
ACH, and AI, blacks were 1.3 to 1.5 S.D.s behind. The relative disadvantage for Hispanics 
was about half that for blacks on the most science-relevant variables—HSSCI, SATM, 
ACH, and Al. Note, as Ramist et al. (1994) showed (particularly at selective colleges of 
the sort under study here), that high school grades evinced far smaller disadvantage for 
blacks and, especially, for Hispanics, than SAT scores. Note also that nearly all of these 
minority disadvantages would be larger if measured against the Asian-white standard 
deviation. 

Apart from the Asians, these differences in preparation and developed ability for science did 
not affect the proportion of each group having an initial intent to major in science (row 8 of 
the lower panel of Table 1), with blacks and Hispanics having been a little more interested 
initially than whites, despite relative deficits in high school preparation, performance, and test 
scores. Such a result implies an ethnic effect of the sort suggested in the literature: blacks, 
especially, aspire to be in science, all other measures held equal (Dunteman, Wisenbaker, 
and Taylor, 1979; Oakes, 1990). This implied finding is important, because intention to 
concentrate in science is by far the strongest predictor of actually doing so (in our group 
overall, the phi correlation was .55). 

The implication of an ethnic effect was tested by analyzing the residuals from the multiple 
regression equation predicting initial interest (Science = 1; Nonscience = 0). In the 
predictive equation, all the preadmission variables were highly significant (p < .0001), 
with R" = .20; number of high school courses in math and science (NSCI), the average 
grade in them (HSSCI), and SATV were by far the most powerful predictors, the last one 
being negative. High school nonscience grades (HSNON), SATM, and ACH were weaker 
predictors, with the first being negative. Analysis of variance of the residual scores by ethnic 
group yielded a significant ethnic effect (F(3, 3662) = 5.05,/? < .002). Blacks were more 
likely than predicted to express an intention to major in science (mean residual, .10), and, 
by Bonferroni t-tests, were more likely than the other groups (whose mean residuals were 
.00, .00, and — .01 for Asians, Hispanics, and whites, respectively) to do so. 111 The 
interactions of ethnicity with the preadmission variables were separately assessed by the 
tests for covariate-by-treatment interactions outlined by Stevens (1992, pp. 344-355). No 
single covariate-by-treatment interaction was significant, nor was the lumped covariate-by¬ 
treatment interaction. 

It does appear, once more, that blacks would be very well represented in science if intention 
to be a scientist were the decisive controlling variable. The present data on rates of initial 
interest in natural science and engineering agree with data cited in the introduction: Asians 
and whites are high and low in interest, with blacks and Hispanics close together in the 
middle. 



Statements 


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54 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology. Engineering & Math Careers 


Performance 

Table 2 shows data for the same variables shown in the lower panel of Table 1, now 
subdivided by initial interest in either science or nonscience majors, and it adds data on 
college performance variables of interest. These are grades in the first two undergraduate 
years in science courses (SGPA), courses not in science (NGPA), and the percentages of 
each group who finally majored in science. The chief differences between the two major 
interest groups were, understandably, on three variables very strongly predictive of interest 
in science—number of and grades in high school science courses (NSCI and HSSCI), 
and SATM, where the differences exceeded a half standard deviation—and on ACH, where 
the difference amounted to a third of an S.D. Because grades in nonscience high school 
courses were nearly the same in each major group, and SATV scores only moderately favored 
those not initially interested in science, the students initially interested in science had a 
modestly though significantly higher AI, a common result (Green, 1989; White, 1992) with 
respect to the relatively high overall quality of academic preparation among science 
students. 

Despite these differences, science grades in the first two college years were slightly greater 
for the group not initially interested in science than for the group that was. We analyzed 
this anomaly in the earlier paper (Strenta et al., 1994): science departments offer fairly easy 
courses for nonscientists and do not grade them as rigorously as courses that are part of 
their majors. Here, however, we are primarily concerned with ethnic differences, in particular 
differences in persistence among the students who came to their colleges intending to 
concentrate in science. Some can be accounted for by differences in preadmission measures 
of preparation and developed ability; whatever cannot be so accounted for may be fairly 
attributable to ethnicity or to variables associated with it. 

Of the students initially interested in science, the relative position of blacks and Hispanics 
on science-relevant variables was worse than it was among all students (as was shown in 
Table 1), another example of the rule that the more rigorous the selection from groups differing 
at the mean, the greater the relative disadvantage of the groups with the lower means. The 
deficits were particularly large on the Academic Index (Al), about 1.7 and 1 S.D., respectively, 
below the average of similarly interested white and Asian students. There were somewhat 
smaller but still substantial deficits in high school science grades (HSSCI of about 1.0 and 
0.5 S.D.s, respectively) and ACH (about 1.6 and 0.7 S.D.$), so that the deficits in the 
Academic Index were about the same as in SATM (in these comparisons we have used as 
divisors for units of effect size the S.D.s for the students interested in science, since they are the 
ones populating the serious introductory science classes—if the white-Asian S.D.s are used, the 
differences grow by 15% to 20%). 

Persistence 

The expected consequences of these differences on science-relevant variables are differences 
in persistence, the proportion of students initially interested in science who actually majored 
in science, shown in the next-to-last row of the top panel of Table 2. Such persistence varied 
predictably: the rate for Asians, at 70%, was twice that for blacks (34%); and rates for 
whites (61%) and Hispanics (55%) were intermediate. The differences shown in percent who 
majored in science were highly significant (x 2 = 58.99, df =3 ,p < .0001), as were the ethnic 



Statements 


55 


differences, in the same order as just given, in rate of recruiting to science majors (next to 
last row of the lower panel) from those students who had not expressed an initial intent to 
major in it (x“ = 23.37, df= 3 ,p< .001). The high rates for Asians and whites resemble 
those given in the High School and Beyond (in Hilton et al., 1989) and the Astin and Astin 
(1993) data discussed in the introduction. 

The most serious form of nonpersistence, leaving school altogether, manifested similar 
differences (final row of each panel). For students initially interested in science, the ethnic 
termination rates were significantly different (x 2 = 37.91, df = 3,p < .001), as were the 
differences among the highly similar termination rates among those students not initially 
interested in science (x~ = 21.40, df= 3,p < .001). By national standards, of course, the 
termination rates shown in Table 2 are very low loss rates. 

Hispanics appear to have persisted more, and blacks less, than preadmission variables might 
have indicated. The R" for the regression of persistence on preadmission variables was .10, 
with the strongest predictors being number of, and grades in, high school science courses 
(NSCI and HSSCI), ACH, and (negatively) SATV (all p < .0001). We again analyzed the 
residuals from this regression by ethnic group. The F-ratio (2.54, df - 3, 1631 ,p < .06) was 
nonsignificant. Blacks averaged a residual score of — .08 (they persisted less than 
predicted); Hispanics averaged .09 (they persisted more than predicted); whites (— .01) and 
Asians (.04) averaged closer to prediction. 1 ' The interactions of preadmission variables with 
ethnicity were again assessed for covariate-by-ethnicity interactions (Stevens, 1992), which 
were again nonsignificant. 

The marginal ethnic effect of the main analysis perhaps warrants some speculation. The 
decrement for blacks may be to some degree the complement of the "excess" initial interest 
beyond what preparation and developed abilities would have predicted. The Hispanic 
increment over the predicted rate may have to do with the uncommonly large proportion, 
over 50%, of their science-interested group who wanted to go into engineering, the science 
area where persistence is highest. These speculations notwithstanding, however, the main 
result of this analysis of ethnic group residuals is not significant: preadmission variables 
accounted for a significant fraction of the variance of persistence decisions and ethnicity 
did not. This lack of ethnic effects on persistence echoes similar noneffects in the Hilton et 
al. (1989) and Astin and Astin (1993) regression analyses. 

Overview 

For our subjects, the combined effects of persistence, recruiting, and termination left 45.2% 
of the entire incoming group of Asians, 30.1% of whites, 27.8% of Hispanics, and 16.6% of 
blacks still majoring in science after 4 years. By comparison, a recent NSF report (National 
Science Board, 1993) gives corresponding percentages of all science degrees (among all 
bachelor's degrees given in 1991) as 33.1% for Asians, 14.0% for whites, 10.3% for 
Hispanics, and 12.4% for blacks. Astin and Astin (1993) reported corresponding figures of 
35.9%, 16.6%, 13.1%, and 16.1%. The Asians, whites, and Hispanics in our selective sample 
did much better, but the blacks, though also highly selected, did not. 




56 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology . Engineering & Math Careers 


Figure 1 shows the conventional grade-point averages (GPAs) of the different ethnic groups, 
for each year and by kind of major: science in panel A and nonscience in panel B. As is 
typical, grades in humanities and social sciences were generally higher than those in science, 
even though the average Academic Index (AI) in the nonscience majors was significantly 
lower, by 0.4 S.D., than that in science. Grades in nonscience majors rose more steeply from 
the first to the final year; indeed, grades of science majors did not on average rise at all in 
the second year, and for minority groups they fell. The ordering of the ethnic groups was the 
same, regardless of year or category of major. 



FKS. I- Average grades by year, erhnic group, and division. 


We used these data to test a common hypothesis, the "late bloomer" hypothesis: that is, that 
non-Asian minority groups will close the initial gap with whites and Asians after they 
have made their adjustments to a putatively strange, unsettling, elite, largely white 
collegiate world. The dependent measure was the difference between first- and fourth-year 
GPA, by group and category of final major. The effect of major category was very large 
(FBI, 4186) = 64.5, p < .0001), the effect of ethnic group nonexistent (F < 1), and the 
interaction of ethnicity and major category marginal (F ( 3 , 4186) = 2.37, p < .07). This last 
result arose from the very small net upward shift over years for blacks who majored in 
science, and it may have something to do with the fact that their average science grade in 
the first 2 years (SGPA = 2.40) was 1.3 S.D.s lower than the average SGPA of white and 
Asian science majors (3.16), a very difficult competitive position. But the chief result here 
was one found in every longitudinal test of the "late bloomer" hypothesis we know of 
(Elliott and Strenta, 1988; Wilson, 1980, 1981): non-Asian minorities do not catch up with 
whites and Asians over time. Astin and Astin (1993) reported, in fact, that the African- 
Americans in their longitudinal sample had lost relative ground on quantitative tests (e.g., 
from SATM to GREQ) over 4 years, probably because they were less likely to have studied 
in quantitative areas. 















Statements 


57 


Many discussions of choice of. and persistence in, science do not employ many of the 
variables used here—achievement test scores and scores derived from high school 
transcripts—because they are unavailable or difficult to get. But many investigators do have 
SAT scores for analysis. We therefore present a more detailed analysis of the SATM 
scores—their relation to various choices and their distribution—to facilitate comparisons 
with other work. Figure 2 illustrates the general relation between SATM scores and the rate, 
at any score level, of majoring in science in this sample. For scores below 640 the rate was 
low and moderately rising. Above 640, there was a steep increase in rate with score level 
until at the top two score levels over half the students majored in science. Indeed. 89% of all 


ETHNICITY IN CHOOSING AND LEAVING SCIENCE 



FIG. 2. Probability of majoring in science given a particular SATM score. 


science majors had SATM scores of 650 or more, and 70% had scores at or above 700. The 
implications of these figures for the representation in science majors of Hispanics and 
blacks, of whom only 53% and 25%, respectively, had scores of 650 or more, are negative. 





58 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


The leftmost panel of Table 3 shows the SATM score distribution for each ethnic group, as 
proportions of each group falling within three broad score categories: <550, 550-640, and 
650-800. The middle and rightmost panels show the proportions within each score category 
who were interested in or who majored in science, respectively. The rightmost panel shows 
that, given a score of 650 or better, the Asians were more likely than all others to major in 
science' (x 2 = 32.2, df = 3; p < .001); the proportions for the other groups were not 
different. Given a middling score of 550-640, both Asians and Hispanics were relatively 
more likely to major in science (x 2 = 25.3, df= 3 ,p < .001) than blacks and whites, and 


TABLE 3. Distribution of SATM Scores and Science Choice by Ethnic Group 


Percent in Each Score Category 

Of All Students _ Interested in Science Who Majored in Science 


Group 

<550 

550-640 

>640 

<550 

550-640 

>640 

<550 

550-640 

>640 

ASIAN 

a 

10.0 

89.1 

a 

36.8 

57.3 

a 

26.3 

47.6 

WHITE 

2.1 

18.8 

79.1 

11.3 

22.3 

47.4 

5.6 

13.0 

35.4 

HISP. 

10.0 

37.0 

53.1 

23.8 

46.2 

46.4 

4.8 

32.1 

29.5 

BLACK 

23.8 

51.0 

25.2 

33.3 

46.6 

48.8 

7.4 

13.2 

30.2 

TOTAL 

3.9 

21.0 

75.1 

24.2 

29.6 

48.9 

6.7 

15.4 

36.9 


a Cell size <10. 


within each of those pairs there was no difference. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that, 
score level for score level, roughly the same proportions of blacks as whites majored in 
science, and at the highest level where the vast majority of the majors came from, Hispanics 
were also the same as blacks and whites. 

These data may assist us in dealing with the most obvious disparity in results concerning 
persistence in science among talented non-Asian minority students. We refer to the results of 
Hilton et al. (1989) on students who aspired to major in science or engineering and had 
SATM scores of 550 or better. Our persistence rates of 70% for Asians, 61% for whites, 
and 55% for Hispanics are similar to the corresponding rates of 70%, 55%, and about 60% 
for the groups of students studied by Hilton et al., but their rate for persistence by blacks was 
nearly double ours, 62% vs. 34%. Can this disparity be reconciled? 

Whether it can be completely or not, we think the size of the discrepancy is more apparent 
than real, for several reasons. 

First, to mention probably the smallest contribution to it: over half the non-Asian minority 
subjects in Hilton et al. (1989) were prospective engineers (compared with 42% of our black 
and Hispanic science intenders), and engineering is the field of highest persistence. Second, 
their subjects were selected from SAT takers who had SATM scores of 550 or higher in 
1984-85, intended to major in science or engineering, and were later asked, in February 
1987, what they were doing. Of the half who responded to the questionnaire, 61% were in 
a 2-year or 4-year college or university and either majoring or intending to major in science 
or engineering: i.e., they were persisters. But a few of those persisters had less than a year of 
higher education, and virtually none would have completed more than three semesters. 
Persistence in sciences, especially outside of engineering, can by no means be assumed at 












Statements 


59 


that point in a career-there is a substantial outflow from the science pipeline after the 
second year (NSF, 1990; Massey, 1992). In a large-scale study of persistence in 
engineering, for example, a third of black and a fifth of Hispanic attrition occurred after 
four semesters (Phillips, 1991).Thus, the 61% overall figure would probably have diminished 
in the next 2 to 3 years by some nontrivial amount. 

Third, and most challenging, Hilton et al. (1989) give the figures for black persisters in six 
Ivy League schools, including three of those studied here, and they show 58% persistence, 
well above our 34%. Perhaps the postsophomore attrition just mentioned would bring the 
figures together, but so might other influences. The 93 black students in those institutions in 
the Hilton et al. sample were, we estimate, about a third of all the black students on those 
campuses interested in science, and they may well have been among the best ones, both 
because none were below 550 in SATM, and because, within the study sample, self- and 
institutional selection may have worked to that end. In our sample, nearly a quarter of the 
black students had SATM scores below 550. and while a third of that group was initially 
interested in science, only a fifth persisted. At the other end. the persistence rates of blacks 
in our sample with SATM scores of 650 or more was 59%, about the same as the figure of 
61% for whites. 

Finally, Phillips (1991), reporting on engineering students who began higher education, as most 
of Hilton et al. (1989) students did, in 1985, and who also had SATM scores of 550 or more, 
gave graduation rates as of 1990 as 62% for blacks, 58% for Hispanics. and 83% for 
nonminority students (these high rates for all groups presumably result from engineering 
being the science under investigation). Here, in very large samples going well past the third 
semester, the majority-minority persistence difference reasserts itself, even in talented groups. 
Whites and Asians in such selected groups will still have higher means on SAT scores and 
high school grades, as they did in the Hilton et al. samples, and can be expected therefore to 
persist more. 

We believe, in short, that the Hilton et al. (1989) results are unusual: the facts that their 
sample was truncated at the low end. and that their students attended a wide range of 
institutions and were very early in their college careers when they responded, complicate 
the comparison with other results, including our own. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION 

Though non-Asian minority students in this sample had strong interests in pursuing science 
as a concentration, their persistence in that choice was below average, by a small amount for 
Hispanics and a large one for blacks. It was the preadmission variables describing developed 
ability—test scores and science grades—that accounted chiefly both for initial interest and 
for persistence in science, though being black clearly added something to initial interest. 
These results—the noneffects of ethnicity on persistence—echo those of Hilton et al. (1989) 
and Astin and Astin (1993), who in predicting persistence using elaborate regressions with 
large data sets found no significant ethnic effects. Even so, the persistence of blacks was in 
our case very low. 




60 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Why are so many talented minority students, especially blacks, abandoning their initial 
interests and dropping from science when they attend highly selective schools? The question 
has many possible answers, but we will begin with the factor we think most important, the 
relatively low preparation of black aspirants to science in these schools, hence their poor 
competitive position in what is a highly competitive course of study. As in most 
predominantly white institutions, and especially the more selective of them (Ramist, 

Lewis, and McCamley-Jenkins, 1994), whites and Asians were at a large comparative 
advantage by every science-relevant measure (see Table 2), and on the composite predictor, 
the academic index, they were at a 1.75 S.D. advantage. 

That it is the comparative rather than the absolute status of the qualifications is clear from 
two strands of evidence. First, students at historically black colleges and universities 
(HBCUs) have quite low average SAT scores and high school grades (The College 
Handbook . e.g., College Board, 1988c, or any recent edition; Barron's Profiles of American 
Colleges, e.g., 1988, or any recent edition), but they produce 40% of black science and 
engineering degrees with only 20% of total black undergraduate enrollment (Cullotta, 

1992; Phillips, 1991). For example, with SATM scores averaging about 400, half the 
students at Xavier University are reported to be majoring in natural science (Cullotta, 1992); 
with scores somewhat higher (about 450), Howard University is the top producer of black 
undergraduate science and engineering degrees (Suter, 1993; Cullotta, 1992). It may be that 
many of these students will not progress to higher degrees in science in the same 
proportions that students with an Ivy League science education do; but it is a virtual 
certainty that no one goes on in science without either majoring in it or taking a well- 
prescribed premedical (or predental or preveterinarian) science program. You can't play if you 
don't stay, and leaving science or premed for education or history usually means leaving 
science or premed forever. 

And enough of the graduates of HBCUs do go on in science to establish an interesting and 
significant fact: of the top 21 undergraduate producers of black Ph.D.s during the period 
1986-1993, 17 were HBCUs and none were among the 30 or so most selective institutions 
that so successfully recruit the most talented black secondary school graduates (Thurgood 
and Clarke, 1995, Table 5). Cullotta (1992) quoted a biology professor from one of the 
HBCUs: "The way we see it, the majority schools are wasting large numbers of good 
students. They have black students with admission statistics [that are] very high, tops. But 
these students wind up majoring in sociology or recreation or get wiped out altogether." In fact, 
at our institutions, non-Asian minority students tend to shift out of science rather than to 
drop out altogether. 

We think it certain that more of the black students in our sample would have persisted in 
science had they been, say, at Howard, but more of them would also have persisted at any of 
several majority white institutions as well, and that brings us to the other strand of evidence 
for the competition argument. It appears in Table 4, which we calculated from data tapes 
kindly supplied to us by Warren Willingham from the data sets on nine private colleges he 
studied for his book, Success in College (1985). We have added the data of two others. The 
table shows how science degrees are distributed within each institution as a function of 
terciles of the SATM distribution; institutions are listed in descending order of average 



Statements 


61 


SATM score. Thus, in institution A, over 53% of all the science degrees given were earned 
by students whose SATM scores were in the top third of its SATM distribution, averaging 
753. A similar percentage of all the science degrees given in institution J were earned by 
students in the top tercile of their SATM distribution, but the average of that tercile was 
much lower, at 591. That figure lies just below the figure for black students in our sample 
(Table 1), but it is also just above the score of 581 that characterizes the bottom tercile of 
Institution A, where only 15% of the science degrees were awarded. 


TABLE 4. Percentage of Earned Degrees in the Natural Sciences as a Function of Terciles of 


Institution 

_me oaiiyi i 

Tercile 1 

jistripunon in n institutions 

Tercile 2 

Tercile 3 

% Degrees 

SATM 

% Degrees 

SATM 

% Degrees 

SATM 

Institution A 

53.4 

753 

31.2 

674 

15.4 

581 

Institution B 

57.3 

729 

29.8 

656 

12.9 

546 

Institution C 

45.6 

697 

34.7 

631 

19.7 

547 

Institution D 

53.6 

697 

31.4 

626 

15.0 

534 

Institution E 

51.0 

696 

34.7 

624 

14.4 

534 

Institution F 

57.3 

688 

24.0 

601 

18.8 

494 

Institution G 

62.1 

678 

22.6 

583 

15.4 

485 

Institution H 

49.0 

663 

32.4 

573 

18.6 

492 

Institution 1 

51.8 

633 

27.3 

551 

20.8 

479 

Institution J 

54.9 

591 

33.9 

514 

11.2 

431 

Institution K 

55.0 

569 

27.1 

472 

17.8 

407 

Medians 

53.6 


31.4 


15.4 



Note: Percentages indicate the proportion of natural science degrees awarded to students as a 
function of terciles of the SATM score distribution. SATM numbers are mean scores for each 


tercile, which vary depending on the selectivity and general level of developed ability that 
characterizes an institution. SATM is the score on the mathematical reasoning section of the 
Scholastic Assessment Test. 


The table makes clear two things about these and presumably similar schools: first, the 
the proportions of science degrees awarded, by terciles of the SATM distribution, are about 
54%, 31%, and 15%. Second, the same SATM score may be associated with any of these 
terciles, depending on the selectivity and general level of developed ability that may 
characterize an institution. Put concretely, a student with an SATM score of 580 who wants 
to be in science will be three or four times more likely to persist at institutions J and K, 
where he or she is competitive, than at institutions A and B, where he or she is not. 
Institutions F—K are only about half as likely to give science degrees—with only about 
15% of their degrees in science—as institutions A—E, which average 28% science degrees. 
Still, a 54% chance of getting one of the 15% of the degrees that are in science is nearly 
twice as good as a 15% chance of getting one of the 28% of degrees that are in science. Our 
institutions are collectively like A: 51.6% of the science degrees were given to top tercile 
students, 31.5% to middle tercile students, and the rest, 16.9%, to the bottom tercile. The 
associated mean SATM scores were, respectively, 753, 695, and 607, the last figure being 
exactly the mean score for blacks interested in science in our sample. 

The gap in developed ability between the white-Asian majority and non-Asian minorities, 
especially blacks, especially in science, results from institutional policies of preferential 
admission from pools differing in measures of developed ability and achievement at the 
point of entry into higher education, as the Method section (see Subjects) made clear. These 










62 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


policies subserve the several goals collectively categorized as diversity or affirmative 
action goals, and these institutions are firmly committed to these admissions practices. That 
being the case, non-Asian minority students initially aspiring to science will continue for 
some time to bear a cost in lower grades and in altered academic and vocational goals. It 
may well be a cost such students regard as worth bearing in return for benefits in quality of 
education, variety of points of view, richness of social experience, prestige of degree, or 
enhancement of career prospects. Still, it is a serious cost that should be acknowledged, and 
minimized if possible. 

There are several methods and combinations of methods that have been proposed to reduce 
the gap, and they can be categorized into three general groups: direct inducements to, or 
requirements for, greater study, more general support (mentoring, advising, group work and 
meetings, internships, and monetary incentives), and the elimination of institutional racism. 

It is possible that some features of some of the better-known intervention programs 
designed to increase the number of minority scientists are transportable to highly selective 
institutions. We discuss three of them briefly. 

The Meyerhoff scholars program (Gibbons, 1992; Hrabowski and Maton, 1995; Mercer, 
1994) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), selects some 40 bright 
African-American students (who must have a B average and, currently, a minimum SATM 
of 600, and whose average SATM is 650) from among some 600 applicants from schools 
throughout the state; offers tuition, fees, room and board, and a stipend; requires a 6-week 
program of science and math courses in the summer prior to matriculation; requires a B 
average to be maintained (this motivational device could not be employed at our schools, 
which give only need-based aid); provides a program community, including group meetings 
and common housing; encourages group study and the use of tutoring; links the students 
with scientists and engineers as mentors; and provides summer internships in various labs. 

The program appears to be very successful both in grade performance (no student had gotten 
a grade below C) and persistence (only three had left the program, which began in 1989) as of 
the June, 1994, report in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Mercer. A recent study of its 
first three cohorts (Hrabowski and Maton, 1995) found the Meyerhoff scholars getting freshman 
GPAs averaging 3.5, while a historical comparison group of black science students (most of 
whom who had entered UMBC between 1980 and 1989), matched on SAT and high school 
grades, averaged only 2.8, with the biggest part of the difference coming in science courses, 
particularly calculus and chemistry. There are some problems with historical comparisons, as 
the authors recognize. Also, Meyerhoff students may get special instruction in calculus and 
chemistry in their summer program, and perhaps be graded somewhat less rigorously in 
summer. 

Still, it is easy to believe that the Meyerhoff scholars are doing well, and it would be easy to 
believe that they are doing somewhat better than they would have done without the program 
features that exercise and reward the further development of their talent for science. But 
UMBC is not an unusually selective institution (the white students there average well below 
650 SATM): an SATM average of 650 characterizes African-Americans at such places as 
Harvard and MIT, but virtually nowhere else. So the competitive advantage of the Meyerhoffs 



Statements 


63 


should not be taken lightly as a contributor to their success. The program is selective and 
voluntary, which makes control for motivation by random allocation nearly impossible. The 
hypothesis that the white-black performance gap. at least in the case of the Meyerhoff 
scholars, has been eliminated at UMBC simply by eliminating any gap in entering developed 
abilities cannot, therefore, be rejected on any evidence given so far. 

One of the public technical schools vying for the enrollment of talented non-Asian minority 
students is Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), which also has a well-known 
program, the Challenge Program, devoted to the recruitment and retention of black and 
Hispanic scientists and engineers. In its present form, as described by Smothers (1994). this 
voluntary program begins with a 5-week summer program of the study of calculus and 
chemistry, with an option to take a credit course in psychology in order to reduce the regular 
fall term course load. There are also provisions for mentoring and counseling, and an annual 
awards banquet, but before the introduction of the summer program in 1990. these had done 
little to improve grades and retention. A report of the program's results (Hume, 1994) 
shows that the black participants now get grades that are better than those of their black 
nonparticipating compeers, and nearly as good as those of all Tech students (primarily whites, 
but including the minority students). Retention rates for classes entering in 1990 and 1991 
appear to be higher than those of all Tech students entering in those years. For the Hispanic 
students, the Challenge program has made little difference, but their grades and retention 
rates appear to equal or surpass the average for the institution anyway. The advantage for the 
program participants in GPA is highest in the first term, and drops off to varying degrees 
thereafter, a fact that points to the summer session as perhaps the chief contributor to 
program success. (The somewhat longer summer session of the Meyerhoff program may have 
played a similar role in its effect on freshman grades, cited above. We do not know 
whether the advantage conferred by that program, however large it might be. also fades 
with time.) 

Again, it is difficult to tell how much is contributed by the Challenge Program without 
knowing the data on the level of developed ability brought to it by the various groups. 
Because participation is voluntary, a random allocation study is unfeasible, so motivation 
would remain uncontrolled; but a regression of retention or GPA on preadmission scores 
and grades, with program status added as a predictor, might indicate how much might be 
due to the program itself. It looks to us as if the largest effect in both of these programs. 
Meyerhoff and Challenge, may be on retention. Why might that be? 

A relatively ill-prepared student has a higher than average likelihood of getting one or more 
shockingly bad grades, perhaps his or her first bad grades, in a rigorous college science 
course in the first term. One response is to leave school or leave science. But if the 
student has just finished a 5- or 6-week summer course emphasizing the very materials 
offered in that first term, or making possible a reduced first term course load, there is less 
chance for such failure, and less defection from science. The improvement in grades may 
fade—after all. there will be no more preparatory summer programs—but the student will 
have gotten over the first and most difficult hurdle. In data cited by Massey (1992), 40% of 
black students entering college immediately after high school left in the first year, and the 
figure for science aspirants may well have been higher. The summer sessions of these two 




64 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


programs are ideally suited to provide help when it is most needed. An important feature of 
them, emphasized by both sponsoring institutions, is that they demand hard work on college- 
level material. 

How might such a program be adapted for our institutions? To require it of non-Asian 
minority-aspiring scientists below some level of preparation would be coercive and might 
be stigmatizing and unpopular. If the program were voluntary, and were minority only, it 
might have some of the effect of the Challenge or Meyerhoff programs, though such 
exclusiveness might be neither necessary nor wise. In our sample, the number of students 
initially interested in science, and who had SATM scores less than 600, was 139-67 
blacks, 42 whites, 23 Hispanics, and 7 Asians—or about 35 per institution. It might be 
feasible to offer these students such a summer session, and if voluntary and multiracial, it 
would scarcely be stigmatizing. There might be equity problems near the border—What 
about students scoring 600 or 620 or even 640—but even if the cutoff were raised to 650, 
there would be only 81 students eligible per institution (46% black and Hispanic), and 
many would not come. At the higher cutoff, because of the increased numbers, there is 
some tension between the ideals of compensation (minorities only) and integration (all 
students who are eligible) when money is, as it usually is, tight, but the lower cutoff at 600 
might serve most goals quite well. Similar calculations could be done by any majority white 
selective school. 

Most of the other features of the two programs considered seem to us less useful than 
working on essential course material—nothing is quite so motivating to a student as 
succeeding at the serious business of learning. For that reason, any method of encouraging 
continued hard work would be important. One of the best-known methods of encouraging 
hard work among minority students was devised by Treisman (1992; see Fullilove and 
Treisman, 1990, for an evaluation), who recruited black and Hispanic students at Berkeley 
and later at Texas to special sections of calculus classes where they put in an extra 4 hours 
beyond what they would ordinarily have done, spent in small groups working on 
challenging problems, inevitably teaching and learning from each other and doing whatever 
remedial work might be necessary in that context. Calculus is prerequisite to most sciences, 
so that its successful completion is critical to advancement in science. 

Such selected students had stated an interest in a science or math career, had been specially 
invited to "honors" sections, and had accepted. Clearly they were more motivated than the 
average student in their comparison groups, and they also had slightly but not significantly 
higher SATM scores than those who elected not to participate, with both groups having 
medians in the 470-540 range. That they did significantly better than their comparisons, 
both in grades and in persistence, is no surprise. More persuasive of the program's power 
is the evidence that the nonparticipant minority controls performed the same as all the 
minority students (the comparisons reported were exclusively concerned with black 
students) had done prior to the intervention, which means that the program was offering a 
new way of enlisting the motivation and realizing the potential of at least some substantial 
fraction of the black population. 



Statements 


65 


A later evaluation of the method (Bonsangue, 1994), done on a largely Hispanic population of 
beginning science students at California Polytechnic State University, arrived at similar 
conclusions and added data on comparisons with white and Asian students not in the 
program. Again, minority students who volunteered for the program did far better in the 
first quarter of calculus, by close to a full grade, than nonprogram minority students with 
similar SAT scores and high school grades. They also scored half a grade better than the 
large group of whites and Asians taking calculus, even though the latter averaged 70 points 
higher on SATM. Some of the gains faded in the second year, when the program group got 
slightly lower calculus grades than the white-Asian group, but the 3-year persistence rate 
of the program students was far better than that of any other comparison group. 

The relevance of the Treisman model to highly selective institutions is uncertain. Certainly 
the establishment of so-called "honors" sections exclusively for blacks and Hispanics would 
have doubtful merit-—the white-Asian "nonhonors" students in calculus would average over 
700 on the SATM. But making available sections devoted to workshop problem solving 
would be undoubtedly useful for those of any ethnicity who volunteered for them. We do 
not feel that excluding all or most white or Asian volunteers from such groups is a good 
idea, particularly at private institutions. Race relations are difficult enough without 
keeping majority students from access to curricular methods of presumed efficacy. There 
seems every reason to encourage, though little to require, students to attend such groups; they 
would appear to be especially effective for students who are highly motivated and near some 
threshold of advanced understanding. 

In sum, we believe there are some grounds for considering that prematriculation summer 
sessions, as described, and the provision of group problem-solving sessions associated with 
calculus and perhaps other science courses, would palliate the effects of relatively poor 
preparation for science. It seems especially important that these curricula be demanding and 
not remedial. The white-black gap is sufficiently large and these interventions are 
sufficiently small in scope and unproven in effect that we would anticipate continued large 
differences in persistence, though a little smaller than what now obtains. In addition, we can 
repeat a suggestion we gave in our report on science and gender (Strenta et al., 1994): Let 
secondary schools know quite specifically what sort of preparation typical successful science 
majors at these institutions have had. Black and Hispanic students in our sample took far 
fewer AP courses in physics, chemistry, and calculus than did whites and Asians, and they 
should learn early in their high school careers what they ought to be taking if they aspire to 
study science in highly selective institutions. 

Finally, with respect to the question of institutional or any other sort of racism, it was in our 
sample remarkable for its absence. The only significant ethnic effect in our analyses of full- 
sample data was in initial interest, a measure that preceded matriculation. On a questionnaire" 
answered by 33 black and 25 Hispanic science majors, and 36 black and 26 Hispanic 
dropouts from science, only one (a defector from science alleging a lack of support for a 
woman of color engineer) said anything about racism. Neither these comments nor 
anything else in the questionnaire seemed to us to constitute even a small indictment of 
these institutions as being inhospitable, much less racist. The chief problems for non- 
Asian minority students aspiring to science majors would appear to be not institutional 
racism, but rather a relative lack of preparation and developed ability. 








66 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Acknowledgments. We especially thank John Jalowiec, Ph.D., who was the indispensable central figure in 
organizing, coding, and entering the vast quantities of data that flowed into his files; and the deft constructor 
of the tables and figures of this report. Many others provided essential assistance on this project: Oscar Larsen 
(Cornell) and Mark Gloria (Brown) formatted data files at their respective institutions; Kathleen Gemmel 
(Cornell) provided feedback on early versions of the questionnaire survey instrument; and George Wolford and 
Jay Hull (Dartmouth) gave generously of their statistical advice. This work was supported by grants from the 
National Science Foundation (RED 93 53 821) and from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

NOTES 

1. "Ethnic" includes "racial" in our discussion. We omit Native Americans as a group because there were too 
few of them (34, with only 9 interested in science) for analysis. Also excluded were foreign students (N = 
266) and "others" (N = 333). 

2. The precise mix of Mexican-Americans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and others will usually not be known. 
Because of the varying subgroup composition of Hispanic samples, their place in relation to other groups 
will vary from study to study. 

3 . The same result was found when a MaxR~ stepwise regression model was employed. The variable "black" 
entered after the six preadmission variables, was significant (p < .0001), and raised the R" from .203 to .207. 
Neither "Hispanic" nor "Asian" was significant. 

4 . MaxR 2 regression analysis produced a similar result: in the nine-variable model (six preadmission variables 
plus the three nonwhite ethnic groups), "black" was marginally significant (p < .10) and the other groups 
were not. 

5 . This fact does not contradict the lack of an ethnic effect on persistence, since it is based on SATM alone, 
with regard neither to initial interest nor to the several other predictors employed in that analysis. 

6. The analysis of the questionnaire, contained in a report of these data to NSF, is available from the authors. 

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Thomas E. Fortmann 


Mathematics is ruthlessly cumulative 
—Steven Pinker 

The Commission poses two questions about science, technology, engineering and 
mathematics (STEM): 

1. Why minority students disproportionately abandon their STEM aspirations, 

2. Whether students in institutions matched to their own academic preparation are more 
likely to remain and succeed in STEM, and to what degree affirmative action policies affect 
this. 

I will attempt to answer the first question and comment briefly on the second, based on my 
STEM career and recent experience in K-12 education. 

My background includes a physics degree from Stanford, a doctorate in electrical 
engineering from MIT, four years of university teaching, and 24 years as a high-tech 
engineer and executive. In recent years I have taught mathematics to minority high-school 
students in Boston, founded a math institute for elementary teachers, and served on the 
Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Accumulating Mathematical Proficiency 

Many minority college students avoid or abandon STEM majors for the same reason as 
nonminorities: insufficient math (and science) preparation in K-12. The disproportionality is 
surely related to the well-documented lower quality of math/science (and all other) 
instruction in minority and high-poverty schools. Does affirmative action in college 
exacerbate that? Perhaps. But the problem begins long before college, and it is most acute in 
math and math-related fields because math is more cumulative than, say, history or literature. 

Steven Pinker made this point rather eloquently when he said: 44 

“Calculus teachers lament that students find the subject difficult not because 
derivatives and integrals are abstruse concepts—they're just rate and accumulation— 
but because you can't do calculus unless algebraic operations are second nature, and 
most students enter the course without having learned the algebra properly and need 
to concentrate every drop of mental energy on that. Mathematics is ruthlessly 
cumulative, all the way back to counting to ten.” 


44 


Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (Norton, 1977), p. 341 




Statements 


69 


I would add that the same is true of algebra: students who don't understand fractions and use 
a calculator to multiply by ten can't make progress with algebra problems because they're 
bogged down in the arithmetic (imagine factoring a polynomial if you don't know your times 
tables). 

And so it goes, right down to first grade. 

Preparation for STEM 

We need more students of every classification in STEM, and in Massachusetts our STEM 
Pipeline Initiative uses outreach, summer programs, and other marketing tactics to entice 
more of them, especially minorities and females, into these fields. The problem with this 
approach is that the ''pool" of entering college students who are actually prepared for STEM 
work is quite small. It would be more cost-effective to concentrate limited resources on 
increasing the number of STEM-capable students rather than on recruiting harder from the 
same small pool. 

The small proportion of students entering college able to handle STEM courses and majors 
reflects the dreadful state of mathematics learning in K-12, particularly among minorities. 
Ask high -school teachers why this is so and they often point to middle school, while middle 
-school teachers lament students’ poor preparation in elementary -school arithmetic. So far 
no one has blamed the obstetricians. 

Unfortunately, this cascade of blame is based in reality. The root problem, in my judgment, is 
an appalling dearth of mathematics content knowledge among elementary and even middle 
school teachers: until we solve that, improvements and innovations at the high -school and 
college levels will have little effect. 

Liping Ma was the first researcher to focus national attention on this issue. 4 ' In fact, my 
experience suggests that the problem is even worse than she describes. In a group of veteran 
5th-6th grade teachers, for example, 57% were unable to answer “75 is 30% of what 
number?” and 76% could not find two numbers between 1 and 2 5 and 1 and 41 100. 

Teachers’ attitudes about mathematics range from trepidation to full-blown math phobia, a 
disease that is highly contagious. This is not the fault of elementary teachers but of 
preparation programs and certification systems that virtually ignore mathematics. And it 
creates a vicious cycle in which each generation of teachers is recruited from a group that 
leaves high school with weaker math knowledge than the last. Massachusetts has begun to 


45 Liping Ma, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999). 
For a review and summary see www.aft.org pubs-reports americaneducator fall99 amedl .pdf. 

46 National Council on Teacher Quality, No Common Denominator: The Preparation of 
Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by .America’s Education Schools (June 2008): 
www.nctq.org p publications reports.jsp. 

47 National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Foundations for Success (Final Report, March 2008): 
www.ed.gov/aboutbdscomm list mathpanel report/final-repon.pdf. 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


address this issue with regulation changes that require more college math courses and a math 
test for elementary teacher certification. 

It’s well known that teacher quality is the most important factor driving student achievement, 
and that teacher quality—including math content knowledge—is generally lowest in poor 
urban districts serving minority populations. Thus the disproportionality that the Commission 
cites is no surprise. 

Affirmative Action 

It seems self-evident, given the cumulative nature of mathematics, that affirmative action will 
hinder some students’ STEM aspirations unless it is accompanied by vigorous and sustained 
efforts to raise their mathematical capacities to the level of their classmates. 

In the absence of effective remediation, should those students be placed in colleges where 
their peers’ proficiency in mathematics is similarly lacking? Doing so may result in more 
STEM majors, but it masks their (and their peers’) low achievement and limited career 
opportunities. The place to address those crippling math deficits is back in K-12, where poor 
instruction and math-challenged teachers, along with low standards and social promotion, 
allow too many students to reach high school and graduate without the mathematical skills 
and understanding they need. 

In other words, affirmative action comes into play late in the game and doesn’t address the 
underlying mathematical deficiencies that deflect minority (and other) students from STEM 
majors and careers. 

Recommendation 

I encourage the Commission to investigate, as a civil rights issue, 49 why so many minority 
kids arrive in college unprepared for STEM majors—i.e., why they need affirmative action at 
all, and what we can do about it. The answers—far beyond the scope of today’s briefing— 
will get to the heart of education reform and teaching quality. There are numerous worms in 
that can, including school choice, teacher preparation and certification, professionalization of 
teaching, career ladders, differentiated pay scales and incentives, collective bargaining, 
accountability, standards-based testing, and school leadership. 

That is a tall order, but necessary in order to get beyond the symptoms and treat the disease. 


4S Details are in the Commissioner’s Guidelines for the Mathematical Preparation of Elementary Teachers (July 
2007): www.doe.mass.edu/mtel/MathGuidance.pdf 

44 Robert Moses, voting-rights pioneer and founder of the Algebra Project, argues in his marvelous book 
Radical Equations (Beacon Press, 2001) that math literacy is a civil right. 




Statements 


71 


Robin Willner 


Let me congratulate the Commission for convening today's discussion and focusing attention 
on the very critical issue of minority participation in Science. Technology Engineering and 
Math (or STEM) careers. 

I'm honored and pleased that you have asked IBM to participate today. And while I would 
not hazard to speak for an entire industry or the private sector. I do believe that my comments 
would gain a good deal of support from my colleagues. There is widespread concern about 
the future labor needs in the growing areas of the economy — every major corporate leader 
recognizes that the U.S. labor force must continue to provide the talent and leadership that 
we need for a robust economic future and to remain competitive in a global economy. I also 
want to take this opportunity to tell you about a recent initiative at IBM that focuses on the 
Hispanic community and share what we've learned about both the challenges and potential 
solutions. 

Before addressing today’s topic, let me briefly provide some important context. While it has 
always been important for business to nurture and prepare a workforce in the U.S. with the 
necessary skills, there have been profound changes in the global economy that make this 
more important than ever before. In a global economy, the world is not only smaller: it's full 
connected, or. if you will, networked. 

There will always be some businesses that will not need to worry about what is happening 
around the world, more and more, successful businesses will take the form of what we at 
IBM call the Globally Integrated Enterprise. U.S. companies like IBM create great 
opportunities for American workers and generate important economic return in the U.S. 
precisely because we are globally integrated and functioning on a global scale. 

In a connected world, we have access to huge new markets. We also can organize our 
business around the globe to optimize operations. If everything is connected, then work flows 
throughout the network. And the most important consideration is TALENT. Localities, states 
and nations are striving to become places where knowledge is generated and transformed into 
new commercial and societal value. They recognize that, of course, we need employees with 
basic skills: but more importantly, we need employees who can innovate. A knowledge- 
based society creates jobs, raises living standards and generates growth that competitors can't 
duplicate rapidly. 

The real wealth generators in today’s global economy are technical people. A recent report 
by the U.S. Labor Department suggests that over the next 10 years, the need for technical 
people in this country is going to grow by 50 percent. 

At the same time, there is a serious shortage of professionals and students studying the fields 
of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I won't repeat the detailed statistics 
that you’ve heard from other speakers and that your own preparatory research uncovered. But 
let me be very clear on this point. There are plenty of reasons to make sure that every child in 




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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science. Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


this country has the opportunity and access to be prepared to be an engineer, scientist or 
mathematician or whatever their dreams dictate. But more importantly, this is an issue of our 
economic survival. If the key to prosperity is having the right talent, then we must take 
advantage of the gifts and promise of every child. We ignore any community at our peril. If 
the U.S. is to remain competitive, we need children from every ethnic and economic 
background prepared for STEM studies and potential careers in the STEM disciplines. 

In our efforts to nurture all of this nation’s talent, we need to attend to students from every 
minority group and young women as well. American ingenuity has always been the product 
of our rich and diverse heritage and the foundation for our economic strength. Each group 
has distinctive challenges and opportunities, and IBM has a range of programming to serve 
the full range of students. However, with our Latino population, we have the classic paradox 
of challenge and opportunity. Or, as our engineers describe it, “the tyranny of large and small 
numbers.” And let me use a few compelling statistics to explain. 

Over the next 40 years, the United States will be the only developed country that will grow 
its population. Much of that growth will come from the Latino community, who are 
estimated to constitute 25 percent of the total U.S. population - a growth rate of 30 percent. 
This segment of the population will certainly be relied upon, heavily, to help drive our 
nation’s economic future. 

However, current numbers of Latinos in STEM degree attainment and careers show that they 
are grossly underrepresented. According to the National Action Council for Minorities in 
Engineering (NACME), Latinos accounted for only 4.2 percent of engineering degrees 
awarded in 2005, and merely 1.5 were awarded doctorate degrees. Dropout rates among 
Latino youths are the largest at 24 percent compared to 12 percent for African-Americans 
and 7 percent for non-Hispanic whites. 

The reasons behind these statistics are extremely complex and deeply entrenched. 

That is why IBM, along with Exxon Mobil and Lockheed Martin and 150 leaders from 
education, business and the community, convened at the America’s Competitiveness: 
Hispanic Participation in Technology Careers Summit in May. The objective was to address 
this once-hidden, but now clearly visible crisis and, more important, to take action. We also 
commissioned a number of research papers from Public Agenda and The Tomas Rivera 
Policy Institute to enhance our understanding and help shape our agenda for action. 

Perhaps the most compelling information came from Public Agenda, after conducting a 
series of interviews with national leaders from every sector. The title of their report tells the 
story: “Out Before the Game Begins.” 

“Nearly all of the interviewees said that when it comes to Hispanic and Latino students, the 
educational pipeline is all but broken. Respondents across the board believed that the current 
educational system is not serving the Hispanic population well. This failure extends to all 
subject areas, not just science and math. Before these specific subjects can be taught well, 
most said, the nation needs to bring basic education up to par. According to nearly all of 



Statements 


73 


those we spoke with, the overall poverty of Hispanic-Americans is perhaps the largest 
contributing factor to poor quality education; Hispanics tend to live in areas of concentrated 
poverty with struggling public schools and a less-than-adequate tax base for funding them. A 
wide swath of the Hispanic population also lacks the necessary English language skills.” 

As a first step, we need more teachers that are qualified to teach math and science. For 
example. Education Trust-West found that 44 percent of math courses at high-poverty-level 
high schools - where there are large concentrations of underrepresented groups - were led by 
teachers without mathematics certification. Given this, it's no surprise that these schools are 
not offering the challenging math and science preparation that students need. In 2006. IBM 
announced Transition to Teaching, our initiative to address the K-12 STEM teacher pipeline 
issue by leveraging our greatest asset - IBM employees. 

But it's not just an educator problem. The absence of role models for Latino students is a 
major inhibitor, according to our research. Parent involvement is a factor as well. Immigrant 
parents face several obstacles that include long work hours, language barriers, lack of 
sufficient formal schooling, and cultural attitudes carried over from home countries that 
hinder a parent’s ability to be an advocate for their child. 

IBM has made a commitment to focus a variety of education initiatives on schools and 
communities serving Latino students — for example, offering free automatic translation 
software to any school district to improve the communication between Spanish-speaking 
parents and English-speaking teachers, and increasing our mentoring programs so students 
can interact with role models. I'd be happy to discuss any of these in more detail, and I've 
provided more information with my written testimony. But. these are problems that cannot be 
solved by one company or one sector alone. Clearly the private sector, no matter how much it 
contributes, is only one part of the solution. There were four key recommendations from the 
meeting. 

The first recommendation is to recruit, prepare and retain qualified math and science 
teachers. We need to create and fund new career paths that encourage the best and brightest 
to leverage industry experience to enhance their classroom skills and vice versa while 
developing more competitive salaries with a cross-industry career. In the short term, we need 
more second career teachers from the ranks of our math and science professionals. The 
private and public sectors must collaborate to develop financial incentives for tuition, in- 
service professional development and competitive salaries. At the same time, we need to 
redesign current teacher preparation programs, encouraging - indeed, demanding that - 
universities, state education departments, school districts and teacher unions work together to 
prepare and support excellent teachers. 

The second recommendation is to find ways to reduce undergraduate attrition rates for 
Hispanics in STEM majors. We need to focus on those young people who have expressed an 
interest in STEM careers and made it as far as a community college, college or university 
program and surround them with the necessary mentors, support sendees and financial aid to 
stay the course and succeed. Other supports could include internships that expose them to 





74 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


STEM careers, job placement services and other connections into the private sector to start 
their careers. 

The third recommendation is to increase the popularity of STEM careers in the Hispanic 
community. The public and private sector should sponsor a major marketing campaign that 
educates the Latino community on exciting and lucrative STEM careers, along with 
information on how to attain them. 

The fourth recommendation is to increase the Hispanic high school graduation rate prepared 
for STEM career training. Every high school must offer the same challenging curriculum we 
offer at the most successful schools, and all of the students must participate. As part of this, 
we must ensure that STEM education starts early and continues throughout a student’s 
schooling. One compelling idea is to establish a formal certification for schools that offer an 
effective STEM program and meet a standard for student achievement across all socio¬ 
economic and ethnic groups. Public recognition and financial incentives would encourage all 
high schools to strive to secure the certification. Middle and high school students should have 
mentors from industry who embody the best that STEM has to offer, as well as internship 
opportunities that encourage students to dream big and work hard. 

Finally, we must find ways to eradicate cultural barriers - such as language - that prevent 
Latino parents from participating in their children’s education. 

America’s goal must continue to be to raise the standard of living for our children. To do so, 
we must take aggressive action. We must capture more minds, more hearts, more souls, more 
passion for the STEM disciplines if we are to retain our competitiveness and attain greater 
heights of leadership. It is an economic imperative as well as a moral imperative. Whether 
you are in business, education or a community leader, I encourage you to get involved today. 



Speaker Biographies 


75 


Speaker Biographies 

Richard Sander 


Professor Sander received his bachelor's degree from Harv ard and a law degree and 
doctorate in economics from Northwestern. He has taught at UCLA's School of Law since 
1989. where he does empirical research on social policy. Sander has done major studies of 
inner-city banking, housing segregation, central city poverty, and living wage laws. He is 
probably best known for his research on legal education; in this area, Sander has studied 
academic support programs, class-based affirmative action, the third year of law school, the 
market for lawyers, and, most recently, the systemic effects of racial preferences in legal 
education and law firms. Sander has w orked to improve the enforcement of fair housing laws 
in southern California, and helped to start a program that substantially increased the 
participation of low r -income Los Angeles workers in the Earned Income Tax Credit program. 

Richard Tapia 

Dr. Tapia currently serves as the Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering at Rice 
University. While at Rice, he has directed or co-directed more underrepresented minority and 
w'omen doctoral recipients in science and engineering than anyone in the country. He has 
received numerous national awards, including the National Science Foundation's inaugural 
Presidential Aw r ard for Excellence in Science. Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring for 
his work with these students. Dr. Tapia is recognized as a national leader in diversity and for 
many years has received dozens of requests to give invited addresses, serve on university 
diversity committees, and provide leadership at a national level. Leading professional 
organizations have recognized Dr. Tapia’s contributions to diversity by naming two 
professional conferences in his honor, describing him as a seminal figure w r ho inspired a 
generation of African-American, Native American and Latino/Latina students to pursue 
careers in mathematics. 


Rogers Elliott 


Dr. Rogers Elliot is Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth 
College. He has served as Chairman of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences 
(1983-86), Chairman of the Department of Education (1975-1980), and as Chairman of the 
Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program (1990-1992). He retired from the College in 2001, 
but has continued to teach a course each year, alternating between psychology and law and 
individual differences in abilities, with an active appointment as Research Professor. He is 
the author of Litigating Intelligence, which addressed legal challenges to intelligence tests. 
With colleagues such as A.C. Strenta. he has studied the issue of student interest in and 
persistence in science, as functions of gender and race/ethnicity. Dr. Elliot w ent on to finish 
his Juris Doctor degree in 1986. 



76 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Thomas Fortmann 


Tom Fortmann received a B.S. in Physics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Electrical 
Engineering from M.I.T. After four years teaching at Newcastle University in Australia, he 
spent 24 years as a high-tech engineer and executive at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, 
MA. Since his retirement from BBN, he has spent over a decade teaching mathematics as a 
volunteer in two Boston high schools, founding a math content professional development 
program for elementary teachers, and working on math/science policy issues in the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of 
Elementary and Secondary Education in 2006. He was instrumental in modifying state 
regulations to require a mathematics test for elementary certification, and he wrote the state 
guidelines specifying college mathematics courses for elementary teacher candidates. He is 
the author of an undergraduate textbook on linear control systems, a graduate textbook on 
multitarget/multisensor tracking, and numerous papers and articles. 

Robin Willner 


Robin Willner is Vice President of Global Community Initiatives for the IBM Corporation. 
She joined IBM in March 1994 to design and implement Reinventing Education , a 
philanthropic initiative in K-12 school reform. This $75 million global program now includes 
25 grant partnerships with school districts and states throughout the United States plus 12 
other countries, each focusing on a collaborative effort to develop new applications of 
technology to overcome common barriers to school improvement and increase student 
achievement. In addition, Ms. Willner oversees a range of global philanthropic and volunteer 
programs, including the Global Citizens Portfolio, Corporate Service Corps, World 
Community Grid, Transition Programs, online mentoring, literacy and work force 
development projects, school-to-career programs and other efforts to apply technology to 
specific societal issues. She also manages IBM’s humanitarian response to disasters, 
including IBM’s response to the China earthquakes, 9/11, the December 2004 tsunami in 
south Asia, Hurricane Katrina and dozens of others. Prior to joining IBM, Ms. Willner served 
for three and a half years as Executive Director for Strategic Planning for the New York City 
Public Schools. In that position, she was the chief policy advisor to Chancellor Joseph A. 
Fernandez and oversaw all evaluation, research, testing and data collection activities in the 
nation’s largest school district. As Deputy Executive Director of INTERFACE, a New York 
City-based not-for-profit agency, for more than a dozen years, she directed over 100 research 
reports on public policy in the areas of education, job training and child welfare. Ms. Willner 
serves on the Boards of Directors of Grantmakers for Education and the Center for Education 
Policy, and the National Academy of Engineering’s K12 Task Force. 



Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


77 


Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot 


The assumption behind the fierce competition for admission to elite colleges and universities 
is clear: The more elite the school one attends, the brighter one's future. That assumption, 
however, may well be flawed. The research presented at this briefing provides strong reason 
to believe that attending the most competitive school is not always best--at least for students 
who aspire to a degree in science or engineering.'" 

Majoring in science or engineering can be difficult.' As one Yale University student told the 
Wall Street Journal , the science course he took “scared the hell out of me.” “In other classes, 
if you do the work, you’ll get an A." he complained. “In science, it just doesn't work that 

^*52 

way. 

Well ... yes ... the feeling that one is flailing about in science or engineering courses can be 
very disconcerting. Many students who start out with such a major switch to something 
easier. Others drop out or even flunk out. And it should surprise no one that those who fail to 
attain their goal of a science or engineering degree are disproportionately students whose 
entering academic credentials put them towards the bottom of their college class.'" Not all 
stereotypes about science and engineering students are accurate. But the basic notion that 
they tend to be highly-credentialed and hardworking is largely on target. They have to be. 


50 Apart from the considerations discussed in this report, there may indeed be something special about the 
education available from America's most academically competitive colleges and universities. It should be 
noted, however, that some of the most sophisticated research available suggests that when it comes to increasing 
one’s income, elite schools are not exactly the ticket. See Stacy Berg Dale & Alan B. Krueger. Estimating the 
Payoff to a Highly Selective College. 117 Quarterly J. Econ. 1491 (2002). Graduates of Ivy League institutions 
are indeed high earners. But. if this research is correct, this is simply a reflection of the fact that very talented 
students attend those schools. If the same students had attended less prestigious schools, they would have done 
on average just as well financially-or so this research suggests. 

In any event, the competition for admission to elite colleges and universities is not a bad thing in itself. 
To the contrary, students who work hard to hone their skills in order to get into their first-choice school have 
improved their skills even if ultimately they are not admitted to that school. But occasionally the competition 
can be over-the-top. Some parents, for example, are willing to fork over as much as S40.000 for advice from so- 
called experts in getting their son or daughter into an Ivy League school. Susan Berfield & .Anne Tergeson. I 
Can Get Your Kid into an Ivy: Michele Hernandez Boasts that 95 percent of Her Teenage Clients are Accepted 
by Their First-Choice School. Her Price: As Much as S40.000 a Student. Business Week (October 22. 2007). 

- 1 In general, when I refer to science and engineering in this statement. I mean to include science, technology, 
engineering and mathematics, which are collectively referred to as "STEM” in the summary of the proceedings. 
The exception is when I discuss the findings of individual empirical studies. There I use terms as they are used 
in the particular study being discussed. 

52 Dana Milbank. Education: Shortage of Scientists Approaches a Crisis As More Students Drop Out of the 
Field. Wall Street Journal (September 17. 1990). 

" See infra at Part C. 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


What some do find surprising is this: Part of the effect is relative.' 4 An aspiring science or 
engineering major who attends a school where his entering academic credentials put him in 
the middle or the top of his class is more likely to succeed than an otherwise identical student 
attending a more elite school where those same credentials place him towards the bottom of 
the class. Put differently, an aspiring science or engineering major increases his chance of 
success not just if his entering credentials are high, but also if those credentials compare 
favorably with his classmates’. 55 

The reasons for this comparative effect are doubtless complex. But they are based on a 
common everyday observation: A good student can get in over his head and end up learning 
little or nothing if he is placed in a classroom with students whose level of academic 
preparation is much higher than his own, even though he is fully capable of mastering the 
material when presented at a more moderate pace. Discouraged, he may even give up-even 
though he would have persevered had he been in a somewhat less competitive environment. 56 

Science and engineering are ruthlessly cumulative. A student who has difficulty with the first 
chapter in the calculus textbook is apt to have difficulty with the second, third and fourth 
chapters. Indeed, the subsequent courses in the mathematics curriculum may be a problem. 

By contrast, an English literature student who simply fails to read the Chaucer assignment is 
not necessarily at a serious disadvantage when it comes to reading and understanding George 
Eliot. Since quitting science and engineering is easy-ordinarily all one has to do is switch 
majors-the attrition rate is quite high. By senior year, there are significantly fewer science 
and engineering majors than there were freshmen initially interested in those majors. 


54 See infra at Part C. 

55 As one early researcher on this topic put it, there is an academic advantage to being a “big frog” in the “frog 
pond.” James A. Davis, The Campus as a Frog Pond: An Application of the Theory of Relative Deprivation to 
Career Decisions of College Men, 72 Am. J. Socio. 17 (July 1966). This article was written well before the 
concept of mismatch came to be associated with the controversy over affirmative action and was not focused 
specifically on science and engineering. Davis found that college GPA is more strongly correlated with career 
choice than is quality of institution. In other words, while students take both their college grades and the 
academic quality of the school they are attending into account in evaluating their career choices, they tend to 
place more emphasis on college grades than is justified. A student at the bottom of his very elite class will 
discount his abilities more than is called for, while a student at the top of a class at a mediocre school will over¬ 
estimate his ability. Davis concludes: “[Tjhese ideas have some implications for educational policy. At the level 
of the individual, they challenge the notion that getting into the ‘best possible’ school is the most efficient route 
to occupational mobility. Counselors and parents might well consider the drawbacks as well as the advantages 
of sending a boy to a ‘fine’ college, if, when doing so, it is fairly certain he will end up in the bottom ranks of 
his graduating class.” Id. at 30-31. 

56 While the observation that a student is more likely to learn in a classroom where his academic credentials are 
not at the bottom of the class is common sense, it is not necessarily true in all contexts. Take, for example, a 
school with 100 first graders. If one were to divide the class into thirds according to their achievement test 
scores, it is not necessarily the case that all three groups would learn more than if they were divided into three 
groups at random. Students with behavioral problems may tend to be over-represented in the group of students 
with the lowest scores for the simple reason that their behavior has interfered with their own learning. 
Concentrating them in one group may create havoc in the classroom that interferes with the ability of all 
students, not just those with behavioral problems, to learn. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


79 


Some call this comparative effect the “mismatch” effect.' And although there is reason to 
believe that it applies to other kinds of learning, science & engineering examples are perhaps 
the easiest to imagine: I have every confidence that I can leam basic physics, despite the fact 
that I have never taken a course in it and my mathematics skills are a little rusty. If I ever lose 
my job as a law professor, I suspect that I am fully capable of re-tooling as a physics teacher 
if that is where the available jobs turn out to be. But if I were thrown into the Basic Physics 
course at Cal Tech, with many of the very best science students in the world. I would be lost 
and likely leam little if anything. I would be mismatched. On a good day I might make a 
few lame jokes about my unhappy situation; on a bad day I might even get a little testy about 
it. But I would be unlikely to come out of that class as competent in the basic principles of 
physics as I would have in a less high-powered setting.' 9 

That doesn't mean, however, that those who aspire to a career in science or engineering must 
graduate from high school already prepared for the rigorous science curriculum at the 
world's most competitive science-oriented university. There are many careers in science and 
engineering. Many have been filled by latecomers to these fields. It simply means that for 
those who are not already well-prepared when they begin to study science or engineering in 
earnest, the best strategy may be to avoid going immediately head-to-head with better 
prepared students. 

The interest of the Commission in mismatch centers mainly on its effect on members of 
underrepresented racial minorities-primarily African-Americans. Hispanics and American 
Indians. Since admissions standards are frequently relaxed in order to admit a more diverse 
student body, minority students constitute a disproportionate share of the students with 
entering academic credentials towards the bottom of any particular class. 60 Obviously, 


■ See, e.g., Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (1993). 

58 Mismatch may be positive or negative. If a typical Cal Tech freshman were to take a Basic Physics class 
designed for law professors like me. many of whom have never excelled at science, she would likely leam less 
than she would have in a class with her fellow Cal Tech students. Coasting through a “Basic Physics for 
Dilettantes” course, she would be the victim of positive mismatch, while I am negatively mismatched in the 
hypothetical. 

■ 9 The empirical studies discussed in this statement, see infra at Part C. do not distinguish among the reasons 
that mismatched students might drop out of science and engineering more often than non-mismatched students 
with similar credentials. They simply record that they disproportionately do so. Is it just because they perceive 
that they aren't doing well relative to other students and hence lack confidence in themselves? Or are they 
actually learning less than their similarly-credentialed counterparts who persevere in science or engineering at 
somewhat less elite institutions? Or both? There is, at present, no national examination for science and 
engineering achievement that would allow researchers to determine whether college students who were 
mismatched and dropped out of science or engineering actually learned less than their counterpans at less elite 
schools who took similar courses. The intuitive answer is that they did and that their self-confidence was also 
shaken in the process. But it is unnecessary at this point to draw a distinction. The law school experience is 
clearer, since law students must pass a bar examination in order to practice law. There is empirical evidence that 
mismatched law students are less likely to pass the bar examination than their non-mismatched counterparts at 
less elite schools. Richard Sander, A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools. 57 
Stan. L. Rev. 367, 393 (2004). 

60 While the Supreme Court case oiGratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was pending before the Supreme 
Court, much publicity was centered around the fact that the University of Michigan routinely added the 
equivalent of an entire letter grade to the admissions index of underrepresented minority students. An African- 






80 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science , Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


however, there are other categories of students, such as athletes, children of alumni and other 
special admittees, who should also be mindful of the risk of mismatch that comes with 
preferred treatment in admissions. 

All such students have a dilemma to face. Should they accept the supposed “leg up” they 
have been offered? Or should they reject it and attend a school at which that leg up would 
have been unnecessary? The answer is likely to vary from student to student and may be a 
question of priorities. Which is more important-that student’s desire to attend the most elite 
school or his or her desire to be a physician, engineer, or scientist? 

The problem is that few students who receive a preference realize that their entering 
academic credentials are well below the institutional median. Fewer still realize that 
relatively low academic credentials are likely to handicap their ability to earn a degree in 
science or engineering there and that their odds would be better elsewhere. Instead, they are 
recruited, indeed romanced, by colleges and universities who allow the scramble for a 
racially diverse campus (or a winning football team or happy alumni) to overcome their 
commitment to full and fair disclosure. 

It is for this reason that the Commission has recommended that colleges and universities 
inform the students they are attempting to recruit of the mismatch issue and its potential 
impact. Tuition for the 2010-11 academic year at Duke University, the University of San 
Diego and Yale University, for example will be $36,065, $36,950 and $38,300 respectively. 
That, of course, does not include room and board, books or various student fees. Many 
students are willing to incur such debt because they envision that their future career will be in 
a well-paying field like medicine, dentistry, or nuclear engineering. When they graduate four 
years later with a degree in a soft major, they may be saddled with a much larger debt than 
they would have been willing to undertake had they understood that the odds were stacked 
against their success in science or engineering. But no one told them. 


American student with a high school grade point average of 2.95 would thus be preferred to an Asian American 
student with a high school grade point average of 3.94 (just shy of straight As) all other things being equal. The 
Gratz case rejected such a formulaic approach, but it did not reject the size of the preference granted to minority 
students. And indeed, the evidence suggests that the size of the preference grew at the University of Michigan in 
the period following the Gratz decision. See infra at n. 39. 

Michigan’s affirmative action policies were not more over-the-top than those of other universities. 
Lawsuits filed against the University of Georgia, the University of Texas and the University of Washington 
prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Gratz brought to light similar practices. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 
932 (5 th Cir. 1996), cert, denied 518 U.S. 1033 (1996)(law school); Smith v. University of Washington, 233 F. 
3d. 1188 (9th Cir. 2000)(law school); Johnson v. Board of Regents, 106 F. Supp. 2d 1362 (S.D. Ga. 2000), 
affd, 263 F.3d 1234 (11th Cir. 2001)(undergraduate admissions policies). See also Robert Lemer & Althea 
Nagai, Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admissions at Six North Carolina Public Universities, 
Center for Equal Opportunity (May 28, 2007)(finding similar preferences at competitive universities in North 
Carolina), available at http://www.ceousa.org/content/view/442/100/. 

Some of the most discriminatory policies are at professional schools. At law schools, for example, the 
average black student has an academic index that is more than two standard deviations below that of his average 
white classmate. Richard Sander, A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools, 57 
Stan. L. Rev. 367, 393 (2004). 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


81 


At minimum, this is an issue that students should be informed of so that they, with assistance 
from their parents, high school teachers and guidance counselors and other advisors, can 
decide for themselves how to proceed. But let's look at the evidence step by step. 

A. Minority' Students Are Indeed Underrepresented in Science and Engineering. 

There is no segment of the labor force that proportionally reflects the nation’s demographic 
profile. Physicians are disproportionately Jewish. Jockeys are disproportionately Hispanic. 
The wine industry employs more than its share of Italian Americans. Even within 
professions, disproportionality is the rule, not the exception. Among lawyers, litigators are 
often Irish-American. Among physicians, radiologists are disproportionately Subcontinent 
Indian-American. 

Lack of proportionality is not necessarily the result of systematic discrimination. There are 
many ways in which one's family background, language, and cultural traditions directly or 
indirectly affect career choices. As a result, it would be hard to find a single profession or 
occupation that looks, as it is often put. ‘like America." The world is always more complex 
than that. 

But science and engineering are special. For one thing, they are not single fields. Instead, 
obtaining an initial degree in a field of science or engineering is the gateway to a large 
number of respected professions and occupations—aviation inspector, bio-chemist, computer 
software engineer, dentist, electrical engineer, forester, geophysicist, hematologist, insurance 
actuary, jet propulsion engineer, lighting engineer, mathematics teacher, nuclear engineer, 
optometrist, phannacist, quantitative analyst, radiologist, science teacher, thoracic surgeon, 
urologist, veterinarian, waste engineer, x-ray engineer, and zoologist. These fields represent a 
significant portion of the most lucrative and dynamic sectors of the world economy. If 
African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians are facing significant impediments in 
entering these fields, that is a situation that calls for attention. 61 

Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates conducted by the U.S. Census 
Bureau. UCLA law professor Richard Sander and senior statistician Roger Bolus have 
calculated the following racial gap in science among college graduates, including immigrants 
educated or partly educated abroad, age 35 and under: 


61 In addition, many have asserted that there is a shortage of Americans trained in science and engineering and 
that this shortage will likely get worse. If a particular segment of the population is underrepresented in these 
fields, it is only prudent for colleges and universities, employers and government to look into what can be done 
to increase their participation. National Science Foundation. Future Scarcities of Scientists and Engineers: 
Problems and Solutions (1992). 





82 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Table I: How Significant is the Racial Gap in Science ? 6 


Frequency Relative 
to Population 

White 

Black 

Hispanic 

Asian 

Gen. Pop. 

100 

100 

100 

100 

Bachelor’s Degree Science 

100 

36 

41 

454 


As the chart indicates, blacks and Hispanics are only 36 percent and 41 percent respectively 
as likely as whites to have a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering. An Asian, by 
contrast, is more than four and a half times more likely than a white to hold such a degree. 
Blacks are only 15 percent as likely as whites and Hispanics are only 26 percent as likely as 
whites to have a Ph.D. in science. Asians, on the other hand, are more than seven times as 
likely as whites. The underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in science and engineering 
is real (although these figures are in part a reflection of the immigration of highly-qualified 
individuals from abroad). 63 

Of course, concern over underrepresentation in science and engineering is not new. On 
November 13, 1992, the popular magazine Science issued a special news report entitled 
“Minorities in Science.” In it, the editors lamented: 

For 20 years, science has been wrestling with “the pipeline problem”: how to 
keep minorities from turning off the obstacle-strewn path to careers in science, 
mathematics, and engineering. Thousands of programs have been started since 
the late 1960s to bring diversity to the scientific work force. But their results 
have been dismal.... 64 

One thing, however, is clear. The problem has not been an unwillingness to spend money. By 
1992, the National Science Foundation had already spent over $1.5 billion on programs 
designed to increase the number of minorities in science or engineering. Officials at the 
National Institutes of Health estimated that they had pumped an additional $675 million into 
the system. Uncounted state, local, foundation and industry programs contributed millions 

65 

more. 

But the consensus of opinion has been that much of the money had been spent unwisely. In 
their eagerness to qualify for the vast grants available to educate future minority scientists 
and engineers, many colleges and universities admitted minority students with little 


" Richard Sander & Roger Bolus, Do Credentials Gaps in College Reduce the Number of Minority Science 

Graduates, Working Paper 2 (Draft July 2009)(using data from 2003)(hereinafter “Sander & Bolus”). 

. . .... . 

Unlike African-Americans, Hispanics in science and engineering do not appear to be underrepresented 
relative to Hispanics in other college disciplines, such as the humanities. Id. Relative to their initial interest, 
however, they are underrepresented. Ordinarily one would expect a language minority to be overrepresented in 
science and engineering, since those disciplines do not require the same language skills as the humanities. 

64 Elizabeth Culotta & Ann Gibbons, Minorities in Science: Two Generations of Struggle: Special Report 
Overview, 258 Science 1176 (November 13, 1992). 

6:1 Calvin Sims, What Went Wrong: Why Programs Failed, 258 Science 1185, 1 185 (November 13, 1992). 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


83 


background in science or mathematics. In the early days of affirmative action, ‘'colleges took 
any person of color who wanted to become an engineer, regardless of their background.” said 
Mary Perry Smith, a former Oakland schoolteacher and founder of California's Mathematics, 
Engineering. Science Achievement (MESA) program, which promotes minority student 
participation in those fields. "They tried to turn students who barely knew algebra into 
engineers and it was a total failure.” 66 

"The country cannot repeat the experiment of the last 20 years,” said Luther Williams in 
1992, then the assistant director of education and human resources at the National Science 
Foundation. Williams, who later went on to become provost of Tuskegee University, a 
historically black university with a reputation for emphasizing a science and engineering 
curriculum, was blunt: Those vast expenditures were "an incredible waste of financial and 
human resources." 6 

Was Williams being too harsh? Perhaps. Progress has been made and it will continue-^ven 
though it is not as much progress as we would like. But if the problem is going to be solved, 
it will not be solved by more of the same thinking that has characterized the efforts of the last 
forty years. A re-examination of the assumptions behind those efforts is in order-even if it 
will step on a few well-entrenched toes. 

B. There is Xo Problem with Lack of Interest in Science and Engineering Among Minority' 
Students. It is Disproportionate Attrition that is the Cause for Concern. 

The problem with minority underrepresentation in science and engineering is not the result of 
lack of interest among college-bound African-Americans. Hispanics and American Indians. 
Study after study has found just the opposite.Indeed, if anything, such students are slightly 
more interested in pursuing science and engineering degrees than white students. For 
example. Professors Alexander W. Astin & Helen S. Astin of UCLA's Higher Education 
Research Institute examined a sample of 27.065 students enrolling as freshmen at 388 four- 
year colleges in 1985. They found that the rate of initial interest in majoring in a biological 
science, a physical science or engineering was. in descending order. 52.6 percent for Asians. 
35.7 percent for Chicanos. 34.5 percent for American Indians. 34.2 percent for African- 
Americans and 27.3 percent for whites. 69 

These findings were consistent with later efforts to study the issue. When Dartmouth College 
psychology professor Rogers Elliott and his co-investigators looked at a sample of 4.687 
students enrolling at four elite colleges and universities in 1988, they found that 55 percent of 


Id. at 1187. 
Id. 


66 

67 

68 Frederick L. Smyth & John J. McArdle. Ethnic and Gender Differences in Science Graduation at Selective 
Colleges with Implications for Admission Policy and College Choice. 45 Res. Higher Ed. 353. 357 (2004) 
(calling this finding "consistent" and citing a number of studies dating back to the late 1970s) (hereinafter 
"Smyth & McArdle"). 

6<) Alexander W. Astin & Helen S. Astin. Undergraduate Science Education: The Impact of Different College 
Environments on the Educational Pipeline in the Sciences 3-9. Table 3.5 (1993), available at 


http: www. eric.ed.gov PDFS ED362404.pdf (hereinafter "Astin & Astin ). 




84 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


the Asians, 44.2 percent of the African-Americans, 44 percent of the Hispanics, and 41.4 
percent of the whites were initially interested in majoring in science. Similarly, Richard 
Sander & Roger Bolus, in analyzing all students enrolling in the University of California 
between 2004 and 2006, found that 57.1 percent of Asians, 40.5 percent of African- 
Americans/Hispanics and 34.7 percent of whites declared an intention to major in science or 
engineering. 71 

To my knowledge, no one who has examined the evidence disputes these figures. They are as 
solid as any figures in social science. If there is a problem with lack of interest in science and 
engineering, it is with college-bound whites, not African-Americans, Hispanics and 
American Indians. 

To be sure, that doesn't mean that there is no point in encouraging even more 
underrepresented minorities to aspire to careers in science and engineering. Programs that are 
proven to encourage such interest may well be money well spent. But if one wants to 
understand the root of the problem, one must look elsewhere. 

And some researchers have. Their work has shown that the problem for minority college 
students comes a little further down the pipeline. While African-Americans, Hispanics and 
probably American Indians have high rates of initial interest relative to whites, they are less 
likely to follow through with that interest. Somewhere in college, the intention to graduate 
with a degree in science or engineering dies. Alexander & Helen Astin report, for example, 
that while 68 percent of Asians and 61 percent of whites in their sample followed through on 
their intention to major in biological science, physical science or engineering four years later, 
only 47 percent of African-Americans and 37 percent of Hispanics did the same. The rest had 
apparently changed majors, dropped out, or flunked out. 

Consequently, while one might expect, given their level of interest, that African-American 
college students would be somewhat over-represented among science and engineering 
college graduates, they turn out to be underrepresented instead. Hispanics are a special case. 
With them, English mastery is sometimes a problem. One would therefore expect very high 
perseverance in science and engineering, since transfer to a discipline that requires verbal 
skills in English can be daunting. All other things being equal, over-representation in science 
and engineering should be expected for a language-based minority. But for Hispanics 
attrition rates in science and engineering were also unusually high. 

Similar results were obtained by Rogers Elliott and his co-investigators. In their study, they 
found that 70 percent of Asians persisted in their ambition, while 61 percent of whites, 55 


70 Rogers Elliott, A. Christopher Strenta, Russell Adair, Michael Matier & Jannah Scott, The Role of Ethnicity 
in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions, 37 Res. Higher Ed. 681,692-93 

(1996)(hereinafter “Elliott”). 

71 Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13 at 3. Sander and Bolus also report that among the University of California 
students enrolling from 1992 to 2006, 52.6 percent of Asians declared an intention to major in science and 
engineering, as did 37.5 percent of Blacks/Hispanics and 34.7 percent of whites. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


85 


percent of Hispanics and 34 percent of blacks did. Others had similar findings. J Again, I 
am aware of no contrary evidence. 

C. Students with Low Entering Credentials in Science , Both in Absolute and in 
Comparative Terms , Are More Likely to Leave Science & Engineering. 

It is tempting to ask the question “What accounts for disproportionate minority attrition?” 
first. But that temptation should be avoided. Instead, the first question should be “What 
accounts for student attrition in general?” Once that preliminary question is answered, the 
question about disproportionate minority attrition essentially answers itself. 

It is no secret that entering science credentials-like Math SAT score and the number and 
grades received for high school courses in mathematics and science-are strongly correlated 
with persistence in science. 2 * 4 * Since African-American. Hispanic and American Indian 
students tend as a group to have lower entering science credentials, they are almost certain to 
have a higher attrition rate from science and engineering. ' 

It would be nice if the disparities among the races, including the disparities between Asians 
and others, could be eliminated overnight by improving the performance of underrepresented 
minorities. 6 For that matter, it would be nice if disparities between individuals could be 
eliminated and everyone could perform better in mathematics, science, and all subjects. 


2 Elliott, supra n. 21. at 694. See also National Science Foundation. Women. Minorities, and Persons with 
Disabilities in Science and Engineering (NSF Report 99-338) (1999): National Science Foundation, Future 
Scarcities of Scientists and Engineers: Problems and Solutions (1990)(fmding persistence rates of 43 percent for 
majority students and 21 percent for minority students); T.L. Hilton, J. Hsia, D.G. Solorzano, & N.L. Benton. 
Persistence in Science of High Ability Minority Students (1989) ( reporting that 54 percent of Asian. 44 percent 
of white, 36 percent of black and 29 percent of Latino high school seniors who had intended to attend college 
and major in science or engineering were doing so two years later). 

' Smyth & McArdle, supra n. 19. at 361-63. 

4 Astin & Astin. supra n. 20, at 3-9, Table 3.5: Elliott, supra n. 21. at 694; Smyth & McArdle, supra n. 19, at 
357: Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13. 

- See id. See also William G. Bowen & Derek Bok. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of 
Considering Race in College and University Admissions (1998). 

6 Sadly, some of the most promising avenues for K-12 improvement are not being pursued. Consider the D.C. 
Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is (or more accurately was) the District of Columbia's federally- 
funded school voucher program, providing S7.500 in tuition per year to low-income students to attend private 
schools. The overwhelming majority of its beneficiaries were African-Americans or Hispanics. At the height of 
the program, it allowed over 1.700 students to escape the grasp of D.C.’s dysfunctional public school system 
and attend quality private schools. 

The best hope that one day racially preferential admissions policies will be a quaint relic of the past 
comes from programs like it. Careful social science research, led by Dr. Patrick Wolf of the University of 
Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions, concluded that, after three years of study, students 
receiving these scholarships had improved reading skills-equivalent to 3.1 additional months of study-relative 
to their counterparts, who had remained in D.C. government schools. In other words, bit by bit. the achievement 
gap was closing. 

The program enjoyed the warm support of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Public Schools 
Chancellor Michelle Rhee-both reform-minded Democrats. It was also supported by almost 70 percent of D.C. 
residents. But teachers' unions let it be known they opposed it-as they do all school choice programs. Buried in 





86 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


There is no doubt that improvements can be made even within the constraints of the current 
system. Dr. Thomas Fortmann testified before the Commission, for example, that more needs 
to be done to ensure that mathematics and science classes at the elementary and secondary 
levels are being taught by qualified teachers. The Commission has responded by 
recommending that K-12 schools “recruit qualified math and science teachers using, if 
necessary, pay adjustments and incentives.” 77 

But if there is one thing that we have learned during the many decades that this problem has 
been receiving attention, it is that few improvements can be made quickly. The mismatch 
problem, however, may be a partial exception. Matching students to the right college or 
university for their level of developed academic ability could increase the number of science 
and engineering majors in fairly short order. 

As three independent studies have now concluded, absolute credentials are not the only thing 
that matters in keeping college students in science and engineering. Relative credentials are 
also important. A student whose entering credentials are at the bottom of the class at the 
school he attends is less likely to persevere in his quest for a degree in mathematics or 
engineering than a student with identical credentials who attends a school where those 
credentials place him higher in the class. 

The first of these studies was that published by Rogers Elliott and his co-investigators in 
1996. The single most important culprit they found was the “relatively low preparation of 
black aspirants to science in these schools.” The Elliott team was careful to put the 
emphasis on “relatively.” It wasn’t just entering credentials demonstrating highly developed 
ability at science that mattered, but comparatively high credentials. A student who attended a 
school at which his Math SAT score was in the top third of his class was more likely to 
follow through with an ambition to earn a degree in science or engineering than was a student 
with the same score who attended a school at which his score was in the bottom third. The 
following chart was presented: 


the 1,000-page spending bill for 2010, was language that closed down the program to new students. The 
program was effectively gutted when President Obama signed the bill into law in December. 

Three months later, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), joined by co-sponsors Robert Byrd (D-WV), 
Susan Collins (R-ME), John Ensign (R-NV), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Jon Kyi (R-AZ), and George Voinovich 
(R-OH), led a valiant effort to revive the program. Without support from the Administration, however, their 
effort was defeated by a vote of 55 to 42. The Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the D.C. 
Opportunity Scholarship Program, closed its doors at the end of the school year in 2010. 

7 Dr. Fortmann testified: “The root problem, as I’ve seen and as I say Eve been working intimately with some 
of these people is the dearth of mathematics content knowledge among elementary teachers. It’s really quite 
appalling and it extends to many middle school teachers as well. And until we solve that, improvement and 
innovations at the high school and college levels really can’t have much effect. And the reason they can’t have 
much effect is the cumulative nature of mathematics that I just mentioned.” Tr. at 47-48. Dr. Fortmann also 
directed the Commission’s attention to evidence that fifth and sixth grade teachers responsible for teaching 
students mathematics were themselves not competent at arithmetic. Tr. at 38-49. 

7S Elliott, supra n. 21, at 681. 

Id. Among the credentials that mattered most were number of science courses taken, average grades in high 
school science courses and SAT-Math score. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


87 


Table II: Percentage of Earned Degrees in the Natural Sciences as a Function of 
Terciles of the SAT-M Distribution in 11 Institutions so 

Tercile 1 Tercile 2 Tercile 3 


Institution 

% Degrees 

c 

SAT-M 

% Degrees 

SAT-M 

% Degrees 

SAT-M 

Institution A 

53.4 

753 

31.2 

674 

15.4 

581 

Institution B 

57.3 

729 

29.8 

656 

12.9 

546 

Institution C 

45.6 

697 

34.7 

631 

19.7 

547 

Institution D 

53.6 

697 

31.4 

626 

15.0 

534 

Institution E 

51.0 

696 

34.7 

624 

14.4 

534 

Institution F 

57.3 

688 

24.0 

601 

18.8 

494 

Institution G 

62.1 

678 

22.6 

583 

15.4 

485 

Institution H 

49.0 

663 

32.4 

573 

18.6 

492 

Institution I 

51.8 

633 

27.3 

551 

20.8 

479 

Institution J 

54.9 

591 

33.9 

514 

11.2 

431 

Institution K 

55.0 

569 

27.1 

472 

17.8 

407 

Medians 

53.6 


31.4 


15.4 



According to the authors, the bottom line was this: A student with an SAT Math score of 580 
“who wants to be in science will be three or four times more likely to persist at institutions J 

Oj 

and K. where he or she is competitive, than at institutions A and B. where he or she is not.” 

For some this is counter-intuitive. The more prestigious the school, they believe, the more 
adept it should be at graduating future physicians, scientists, and engineers, no matter what 
their entering credentials. But instructors everywhere must pitch the material they teach at a 
particular level. They can pitch to the top of the class, to the middle or to the bottom, but they 
can't do all three at the same time. At elite colleges and universities pitching to the bottom of 
the class is uncommon-especially in the science and engineering departments. The whole 
point of these institutions is to teach to the top. That is the reason that students, who may 


80 Id. at 701. 

81 Id. at 702. This estimate, of course, was based on the assumption that the student started out with a desire to 
major in science or engineering. Whether a student with no particular plans to major in science or engineering is 
more likely to graduate with a science or engineering degree if he attends a school at which he is properly 
matched is a more complex matter. As the Elliott team demonstrated, students with higher SAT Math scores are 
more likely to begin college with a desire to major in science. Consequently, institutions A-E likely have more 
students interested in pursuing science than Institutions F-K and thus would naturally be expected to award a 
higher proportion of science degrees, since that is what their students desire. And indeed they did. The Elliott 
team reported that Institution A-E were about twice as likely to award science degrees as Institutions F-K. with 
about 28% of the first group's bachelor's degrees being in science and about 15% of the second group's. 
Nevertheless, as they point out. “a 54 percent chance of getting one of the 15 percent of the degrees that are in 
science is nearly twice as good as a 15 percent chance of getting one of the 28 percent of degrees that are in 
science." Id. at 702. 





88 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


have been positively mismatched in high school, are willing to travel thousands of miles and 
incur significant debt to attend them. If they were to abandon that practice and resolve to 
teach to the bottom of the class, they would no longer be elite institutions. L “ 

The extraordinary record of Historically Black Colleges and Universities was one source of 
evidence cited by the Elliott team in favor of their conclusion. With only 20 percent of total 
African-American enrollment, these schools produce 40 percent of the African-American 
students graduating with natural science degrees according to the National Science 
Foundation. These students frequently go on to earn Ph.D.s from mainstream universities. 
The National Science Foundation reports, for example, that of the approximately 700 
African-Americans who earned a doctorate in science or engineering between 1986 and 
1988, 29 percent earned their undergraduate degree from an HBCU. For biologists, the figure 

o *5 

was 42 percent and for engineers it is was 36 percent. ~ Even those who have mixed feelings 
about HBCUs (and I am such a person) must admit this is impressive. 

Why have HBCUs been so successful? Unlike at mainstream institutions with their high 
levels of affirmative action, African-American students at HBCUs are not grouped at the 
bottom of the class. Roughly half of African-American students at HBCUs will be in the top 
half of the class. Many will be honor students. As a result, systematic mismatch is just not an 

84 

issue. 

The problem is not that there are no minority students capable of doing honors work at 
mainstream college and universities. There are many. But there are not enough at the very 
top tier to satisfy the demand for diversity. And when elite universities like Cal Tech, MIT or 
the Ivies lower their academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, 
schools one or two tiers down feel they must do likewise, since the minority students who 
might have attended those schools based on their own academic record are instead attending 
the more elite schools. The problem thus cascades downward to the fourth and fifth tiers, 
which respond similarly. As a result, a serious gap in academic credentials between minority 
and non-minority students is created at all competitive levels at mainstream universities-a 


" In theory, intensive remedial instruction is supposed to bridge the gap between the top and the bottom. But 
not every theory works out in reality. The educational experience at elite institutions is meant to be a full-time 
job and then some. With only twenty four hours in a day, something has to give. Every hour a minority student 
spends in a remedial classroom, sometimes struggling to stay on top of material other students are having less 
trouble with, is an hour other students can spend getting a deeper understanding of that material. The game of 
catch-up is thus never-ending. 

83 Elizabeth Culotta, Black Colleges Cultivate Scientists, 258 Science 1216 (November 13, 1992)(hereinafter 
“Culotta”). 

The Elliott team members were particularly impressed that HBCUs are able to graduate large numbers of 
students in science and engineering despite entering credentials that were significantly lower than those 
ordinarily found at elite institutions. Students at Xavier University, for example, were reported to have SAT 
Math scores averaging around 400, yet half of the class was majoring in science. If elite schools could do the 
same with minority students (or with students in the bottom third of the class generally), it would be 
astonishing. In fact they do the opposite. They are able to award far fewer science or engineering degrees to 
African-Americans than one would expect given the number of African-American students in their classes. 
Elliott, supra n. 21, at 700. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


89 


gap that results in seriously disappointing grades for many minority students, especially in 
science and engineering classes where good grades are hard to come by. 

At least one HBCU faculty member-Professor Walter Pattillo, Jr. of North Carolina Central 
University-intuitively grasped the mismatch problem even before the Elliott team was able to 
demonstrate its existence empirically. As then-chairman of the biology department, he vented 
his frustrations to Science magazine in 1992: “The way we see it. the majority schools are 
wasting large numbers of good students. They have black students with admission statistics 
[that are] very high. tops. But these students wind up majoring in sociology or recreation or 
get wiped out altogether.’^' 

Neither Professor Pattillo nor the Elliott studv received attention from mainstream college or 
university administrators. Admissions policies at competitive schools continued to emphasize 
the importance of recruiting minority students even if their entering credentials would put 
them towards the bottom of the class.Instead, emboldened by their perception that the 
Supreme Court had given a constitutional green light to racially preferential admissions 
policies in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), selective college and universities ramped up those 
policies.'^ The supposed beneficiaries of these policies-minority members aspiring to 
become physicians, engineers and scientists-were not informed. 

Around that time, however, the tide of opinion among social scientists studying the issue was 

• • • • • OQ 

beginning to turn, even as is remained frozen among college and university administrators." 
One of the milestones was the publication of Increasing Faculn ■ Diversity: The Occupational 
Choices of High Achieving Minority Students in 2003. The long-term project was funded by 
the Mellon Foundation, which had been and remains one of the nation's most zealous 
institutional backers of race-based admissions policies. The authors' mission was to 
determine why more minority students are not attracted to careers in academia. Their 
conclusions, reached after extensively questioning 7,612 high-achieving undergraduates at 34 
colleges and universities, pointed to mismatch as a significant culprit: 

The best-prepared African-Americans, those with the highest SAT scores, 
are most likely to attend elite schools, especially at the Ivy League. Because 
of affirmative action, these African-Americans (those with the highest scores 
on the SAT) are admitted to schools where, on average, white students' 


8? Cullotta. supra n. 34. at 1218. 

86 Indeed accreditation authorities have often demanded it. See. e.g.. Gail Heriot. Affirmative Action in Law 
Schools, 17 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 237 (2008)(symposium issue)(discussing the American Bar Association 
diversity requirements for law schools and its efforts to pressure law schools into increasing minority 
representation). See also Susan Welch & John Gruhl. Affirmative Action and Minority Enrollments in Medical 
Schools and Law Schools 80 (1998). 

87 539 U.S. 306 (2003). 

88 Althea K. Nagai. Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Undergraduate Admission at the University of Michigan. 
Center for Equal Opportunity (October 17, 2006), available at 

http://www.ceousa.org content blogcategorv/78 100/. See also Fisher v. University of Texas, 645 F. Supp. 2d 
587 (W.D. Tex. 2009f 

89 Russell K. Nieli. The Changing Shape of the River: Affirmative Action and Recent Social Science Research. 
17 Academic Questions 7 (2004). 





90 


Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


scores are substantially higher, exceeding those of African-Americans by 
about 200 points or more. Not surprisingly, in this kind of competitive 
situation, African-Americans get relatively low grades. It is a fact that in 
virtually all selective schools (colleges, law schools, medical schools, etc.) 
where racial preferences in admission is practiced, the majority of African- 
American students end up in the lower quarter of the class.... 

African-American students at the elite schools (the liberal arts colleges 
and the Ivy League) get lower grades than students with similar levels of 
academic preparation (as measured by SAT scores) than African- 
American students at the nonelite schools (state universities and HBCUs). 

Lower grades lead to lower levels of academic self-confidence , which in 
turn influence the extent to which African-American students will 
persist with a freshman interest in academia as a career. African- 
American students at elite schools are significantly less likely to persist 
with an interest in academia than are their counterparts at nonelite 
schools 90 

To say that the Mellon Foundation was not happy with the conclusions of its grant recipients 
would be an understatement. Soon after publication, the Chronicle of Higher Education 
reported that the foundation was “trying to distance itself’ from the book’s findings. 91 Unlike 
similar projects with Mellon funding, this one did not receive a publicity push from the 
foundation. 

Dr. Cole told the Chronicle that there was “no chance” that he would receive money again 
from the Mellon Foundation. “And I don’t care,” he said. “I was trained at a time before 
social science became so politicized.” “I believe that social science should be objective and 
value-free, and you should design a study to answer a question and whatever the answer is, 
that's what it is.” 92 

A year after Cole & Barber’s research became public, a second study on the science and 
engineering mismatch issue was published. University of Virginia psychologists Frederick L 
Smyth and John J. McArdle used a very different methodology and a different database from 
those of Elliott and his co-authors. But they reported findings that “are consistent” with the 
earlier article’s conclusion that “race-sensitive admissions, while increasing access to elite 
colleges, was inadvertently causing disproportionate loss of talented underrepresented 
minority students from science majors.” 93 


40 Stephen Cole & Elinor Barber, Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High Achieving 
Minority Students 124, 212 (2003)(citations omitted)(emphasis supplied). 


91 


Robin Wilson, The Unintended Consequences of Affirmative Action, The Chronicle of Higher Education 10 


(January 31,2003). 

92 Id. 

93 Smyth & McArdle, supra n. 19, at 373. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


91 


Indeed. Smyth & McArdle went further. They developed a model that attempts to measure 
how many more minority students would have succeeded in the goal of a science or 
engineering degree if colleges and universities had employed race neutral admissions criteria. 

They wrote: 

“According to our model..., if all the [Science-Mathematics-Engineeringj¬ 
intending underrepresented minority students had enrolled in similarly 
functioning colleges where their high school grades and math test scores 
averaged at the institutional means among [Science-Mathematics- 
Engineering] intenders, 72 more of the women and 62 more of the men would 
be predicted to persist in [Science-Mathematics-Engineering] (45 percent and 
35 percent increases, respectively).” 94 

Smyth & McArdle *s recommendation was very clear: “Admission officials are advised to carefully 
consider the relative academic preparedness of science-interested students, and such students 
choosing among colleges are advised to compare their academic qualifications to those of 
successful science students at each institution." Again, few college or university administrators 
were listening. 

The latest contribution to the literature on mismatch in science and engineering is Do Credential 
Gaps in College Reduce the Number of Minority Science Graduates? 9 ' Using a number of 
sophisticated methodologies, Sander & Bolus arrive at conclusions like those of Smyth & McArdle 
and the Elliott team. 

Sander & Bolus studied data obtained from the multi-campus University of California. All 
campuses of the University of California are quite selective. But some are more selective 
than others. The flagship campus at Berkeley is highly selective as are the UCLA campus 
and the more science-oriented UC-San Diego. At the other end of the spectrum, the campuses 
at Riverside and Santa Cruz are easier to gain admittance to, but nonetheless hardly “easy.” 

Employing what they call the “distance method.” Smyth & Bolus measured the distance 
between each student’s entering academic index and the median academic index of all 
science and engineering-interested students at that campus. This allowed the authors not just 
to compare students with equal academic indices attending different University of California 
campuses, but also to make comparisons based on the magnitude of mismatch. Since the UC 
campuses differ in their median academic index, students with equal academic indices but 
attending different campuses will differ in their level of mismatch. 96 

They found that students who are “mismatched” at one University of California campus are 
at a greater risk of failing to attain their initial goal of a science or engineering degree than 
otherwise identically-credentialed students attending a less selective campus of that same 


w Id. at 373. 

93 Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13. 

96 Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13, at 14-20. 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science , Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


university at which they were not mismatched. And the greater the mismatch, the greater the 
problem. 

Not satisfied with confining their analysis to the “distance method,” Sander & Bolus also 
employed what they dubbed the “first choice/second choice” method. This approach involves 
looking at pairs of students who were admitted to two different UC campuses, one more elite 
and the other less elite. In each pair, one student chose to attend the more elite school and the 
other the less elite. The results were the same: Mismatched students are at a disadvantage in 
science and engineering. 9 

“Minority attrition in science is a very real problem, and the evidence in this paper suggests 
that ‘negative mismatch’ probably plays a role in it,” they wrote. The approaches they took 
yielded consistent results: “[Sjtudents with credentials more than one standard deviation 
below their science peers at college are about half as likely to end up with science bachelor 
degrees, compared with similar students attending schools where their credentials are much 

QO 

closer to, or above, the mean credentials of their peers.” 

D. Conclusion. 

Decades ago, well-meaning administrators at selective college and universities resolved to 
“do the right thing” by extending preferential treatment to underrepresented minorities in 
admissions. One of the consequences of that policy has been systematically low college 
grades for the supposed beneficiaries of that preferential treatment. 99 No, it doesn’t apply to 
all such students, but it is nevertheless a widespread phenomenon. And the reason is simple: 
While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some 
students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their entering 
credentials predict. 

No serious supporter of affirmative action denies this. William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, 
authors of The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in 
College and University Admissions and long-time advocates of race-based admissions 
policies, candidly admit that the credentials gap has serious consequences: “College grades 
[for affirmative action beneficiaries] present a ... sobering picture,” they wrote. “The grades 


97 Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13, at 20-23. 

98 Sander & Bolus, supra n. 13, at 23-24. 

99 The figures for law schools grades are available and particularly instructive: In elite law schools, 51.6 percent 
of African-American law students have first-year GPAs in the bottom 10 percent of their class as opposed to 
only 5.6 percent of white students. Nearly identical gaps exist at law schools at all levels (with the exception of 
historically minority schools). At mid-range public schools, the median African-American student’s first-year 
grades corresponded to the 5 th percentile among white students. For mid-range private schools it was 7 th . With 
disappointingly few exceptions, African-American students were grouped towards the bottom of their class. 
Moreover, contrary to popular belief, the gap in grades did not close as students continued through law school. 
Instead, by graduation, it had gotten wider. Richard Sander, A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in 
American Law Schools, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 367, 427-36, Tables 5.1, 5.3 & 5.4 (2004). I am not aware of anyone 
who disputes these figures, and indeed some critics of Sander’s work appear to have conceded their accuracy. 
See Ian Ayres & Richard Brooks, Does Affirmative Action Reduce the Number of Black Lawyers?, 57 Stan. L. 
Rev. 1807, 1807 (2005) (“Richard Sander’s study of affirmative action at U.S. law schools highlights a real and 
serious problem: the average black law student’s grades are startlingly low”). 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


93 


earned by African-American students at the [schools we studied] often reflect their struggles 
to succeed academically in highly competitive academic settings.” 100 

The long-term social and educational consequences of decades of race-based admissions 
policies and the artificially low grades for minorities those policies produce are only now 
beginning to be studied. The evidence examined by the Commission on Civil Rights focuses 
only on the effects on science and engineering majors. It suggests that, as a result of race- 
based admissions policies, we now have fewer, not more, physicians, dentists, engineers, 
scientists and other science-oriented professionals than we would have had under a policy of 
color-blindness. 

While there are still a few unanswered questions, it is time for students to be advised of the 
issue and allowed to make their own decision about their fuUire. Indeed, it is long past time. 
If higher education were held to the same standards of consumer disclosure as other 
businesses-from securities brokerage houses to children's toy manufacturers-disclosure 
would have come long ago. 

Statement of Commissioner Ashley L. Taylor, Jr. 


It is my sincere hope that readers of this report picked up on a significant yet subtle message 
in the second paragraph of the Executive Summary clarifying that this topic was limited to 
the acceptance of minority students to very rigorous academic programs at elite, selective 
institutions where the institution is very unlikely to provide any remedial assistance to 
overcome K-12 academic deficiencies. This report is not intended to address the admissions 
or success of all minority students who pursue a science, technology engineering or math 
(STEM) course of study at all universities. It is a narrow look at the fate of the students who 
find themselves selected by an institution into a course of study for which they are 
underprepared or have little support. 

The STEM disciplines are difficult for all students, but especially for students whose K-12 
experience, both in the school and at home, left them lacking critical academic skills or 
critical study skills. Elnlike the humanities, arts, literature, even business courses of study, the 
STEM disciplines build quickly from one level to the next leaving little time or room to play 
“catch up" for a student who starts the program at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, there 
remains a persistent gap between non-Asian minorities and whites in K-12 preparation 
insofar as it relates to the profile of students admitted to elite institutions. It is that small but 
critically important high performing minority slice of the student population which needs 
information that can assist them in choosing the right college to attain their future goal. 

I particularly support the first two recommendations of this report from a consumer 
protection standpoint. Minority students who are applying to or being recruited by elite 
institutions for STEM programs need to know certain fundamental realities. There is a 


100 William G. Bowen & Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in 
College and University Admissions 72 (1998). 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


delicate balance between full disclosure and outright discouragement of students’ ambitions. 
But, there is a higher price paid by the student (and the student’s family) who drops out of a 
STEM program than is paid by the institution, and for that reason I prefer to err on the side of 
full disclosure. 

That said, I believe that every student should be viewed as an individual. We should never 
place people in typecast such that we eliminate their opportunity to expand and excel. 

Students should be given every opportunity to do so, and we shouldn't make assumptions 
about any individual. That is the beauty of our country — we don't do that. We don't have 
scripts for people depending on what class of society they come from. It is also important, 
however, that the student be made aware of the facts. Those facts could be brutal, those facts 
could be demoralizing and I understand the reluctance and hesitation of presenting those 
facts to an 18 year-old young adult who may not have the capacity to properly process and 
assimilate that information. 

The schools have a duty to provide the support for every student they admit. Unfortunately, I 
believe that the schools focus a lot more on admissions and matriculation and not enough on 
graduation and success upon graduation. When the school doesn't uphold its end of the 
bargain, students doesn't know how much force they are going to have to apply to the 
situation or how much harder they are going to have to work than the person sitting beside 
them. I believe that the students we are talking about in this report would apply that pressure 
if they knew it was needed. 

In life, the only way you can know how much pressure to apply to a situation is if you know 
what you are up against. I am very concerned that some minority students are walking into 
certain academic environments where the school fails to provide that support naturally. To 
those students who are in those difficult situations and are aware of the uphill climb, I want 
to encourage them. I want them to know there are people and resources that can help them if 
they seek it. 

On a final note, I have intentionally elected not to use the term “mismatch” which was 
presented during the briefing and is used in the report. The word, in my view, carries 
connotations which may be easily misconstrued. 

Dissent of Commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan D. Melendez 


We strongly dissent from this Report and most of its Findings and Recommendations for 
several reasons. Specifically, we dissent from: 1) Part A; 2) Findings 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7; and 
3) Recommendations 1, 2, 3, and 4. Our principal objection to this Briefing and Report is that 
they were fundamentally not about encouraging minorities to pursue careers in STEM fields. 
Rather, the major focus of the briefing and report was to promote Rogers Elliott, Richard 
Sander and their “mismatch” theory. 



Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


95 


As was noted at the Briefing Hearing, the panel was unbalanced and stacked in favor of 
“mismatch" proponents. 101 Even Mr. Elliott conceded that his comments were substantially 
similar to those of Mr. Sander. 10- In addition to being mostly a reaffirmation of Mr. Sander's 
conclusions, Mr. Elliott's testimony was based on his paper which was already well over a 
decade old by the time of our Briefing Hearing. 

Mr. Sander’s efforts to promote the theory of “mismatch” with regard to law school and the 
legal profession 10 ' have been soundly debunked in a sustained manner. 104 Mr. Sander’s 
attempts to address his critics and salvage his initial claims 10- have resulted only in further 
critiques that have supported the initial critiques and have pointed out that Sander’s self- 
defense has resulted in self-undermining. 100 Perhaps in response to the discrediting of his 
initial claims concerning the effect of “mismatch,” Sander himself has avoided using the term 
“mismatch" in his most recent work. 10 

The Report's recommendations are largely premised on claims regarding the effect of so- 
called “mismatch.” This effect has been exaggerated by both Elliot/Sander and their admirers 

10R 

on the Commission. We are concerned that the recommendations, grounded as they are in 
these out-sized claims, would have the effect of discouraging minorities from pursuing 
careers in STEM fields. This outcome would be diametrically opposed to the stated purpose 
of this report. 


101 United States Commission on Civil Rights, STEM Briefing Transcript, p. 146 (Commissioner Yaki 
speaking). 

107 Id. P :s4. 

Richard H. Sander, A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools. 57 STAN. L. Rev. 
367 (2004). 

104 See. e.g., Ian Ayers & Richard Brooks. Does Affirmative Action Reduce the Number of Black Lawyers 9 , 57 
STAN. L. Rev. 1807 (2005): David B. Wilkins. A Systemic Response to Systemic Disadvantage: A Response to 
Sander, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 1915 (2005); Daniel E. Ho. Scholarship Comment. Why Affirmative Action Does Not 
Cause Black Students To Fail the Bar, 114 Y.ALE L.J. 1997 (2005). 

105 Richard H. Sander, A Reply to Critics, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 1964 (2005); Richard H. Sander, Mismeasuring the 
Mismatch: A Response to Ho, 114 Y.ALE L. Rev. 2005 (2005). 

106 See. e.g., David L. Chambers. Timothy T. Clydesdale, William Kidder & Richard Lempert. Tire Real Impact 
of Eliminating Affirmative Action in American Law Schools: An Empirical Critique of Richard Sander's Study. 
Mich. L & ECON Working P.APER NO. 05-007 (2005), mailable at 

http://papers.ssm.conv sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=730506##; David L. Chambers. Timothy T. Clydesdale, 
William Kidder & Richard Lempert. Affirmative Action in American Law Schools: A Critical Response to 
Richard Sander's "A Reply to Critics", MlCH. L & ECON WORKING P.APER No. 06-001, available at 
http://papers.ssm.com sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=886382: Katherine Y. Barnes, Is Affirmative Action 
Responsible for the Achievement Gap Between Black and White Lcrw Students?, 101 Nw U. L.Rev. 1759 
(2007). 

107 Richard H. Sander & Jane Yakowitz, The Secret of My Success: How Status. Prestige and School 
Performance Shape Legal Careers, (2010), av ailable at 

http://papers.ssm.com' sol3/papers.cfim?abstract_id= 1640058. 

108 Admittedly, the exact nature and extent of this “mismatch*’ effect has been obscured by resort to vague 
language in the recommendations, such as “large deficit.” It should be noted that initial approval of this report's 
recommendations was scuttled when a majority of Commissioners were unwilling to endorse this imprecise 
language. See USCCR Business Meeting Transcript June 11, 2010. pp. 27-34. 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Additionally, we object to the non-deliberative manner by which the Findings and 
Recommendations were drafted and adopted. As has been become the norm with the 
Commission, Commissioner-drafted alternatives to staff-issued findings and 
recommendations are only being provided to all Commissioners less than a day before votes 
are scheduled on the findings and recommendations. In some cases, alternate findings and 
recommendations have been issued the night before a Commission meeting, only to be 
superseded by even newer drafts issued the morning of a meeting or during the meeting 
itself. 


Joint Rebuttal of Commissioners Gail Heriot , Peter Kirsanow and 
Todd Gaziano 


Commissioners Yaki and Melendez take the position that the 1996 article by Dartmouth 
College psychology professor Rogers Elliott and his co-authors is “over a decade old” and 
hence in their view too old to be valuable. 109 Perhaps they regard the 2009 article by UCLA 
law professor Richard Sander and UCLA Medical School senior statistician Roger Bolus as 
tainted because it is somehow too new. 110 But, if so, that would still leave the 2004 article by 
University of Virginia psychology professors Frederick L. Smyth and John J. McArdle. * * 111 
Not all these empirical studies can be dismissed so casually. 

All three reach the same conclusion: Mismatch likely puts affirmative action beneficiaries 
who plan to major in science or engineering at special disadvantage. More specifically, all 
three agree that a student whose entering credentials put him towards the bottom of his 
college class is less likely to follow through with plans to major in science or engineering 
than a student with the same entering credentials attending a less elite school where those 

119 

credentials put him in the middle or towards the top of the class. 


Ilig Rogers Elliott, A. Christopher Strenta, Russell Adair, Michael Matier & Jannah Scott, The Role of Ethnicity 
in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions, 37 Res. Higher Ed. 681 (1996). 

1111 Richard Sander & Roger Bolus, Do Credentials Gaps in College Reduce the Number of Minority Science 
Graduates?, Working Paper (Draft July 2009). 

111 Frederick L. Smyth & John McArdle, Ethnic and Gender Differences in Science Graduation at Selective 
Colleges with Implications for Admission Policy and College Choice, 45 Res. Higher Ed. 353 (2004). 

119 

It should be noted that the work of these three investigative teams does not come out of nowhere. It is 
consistent with a long history of research that dates back to the 1960s. That literature includes the work of 
Elinor Barber and Stephen Cole, which found that affirmative action beneficiaries at elite schools are less likely 
than similarly-credentialed minority students attending less elite schools to desire to become college professors. 
See Elinor Barber & Stephen Cole, Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High Achieving 
Minority Students (2003). It also includes a wealth of literature like James A. Davis’s The Campus as A Frog 
Pond: An Application of the Theory of Relative Deprivation to Career Decisions of College Men, which does 
not deal with race-conscious admissions practices directly, but which nevertheless sheds light on the processes 
at work at schools where those practices are employed. Davis found that, for better or worse, among the college 
students he studied, students who get good grades at less competitive schools will think more highly of their 
own academic skills than otherwise identical students who attend more competitive schools and thus earn lower 
grades. He further found that good self-opinion influences career choices. James A. Davis, The Campus as a 
Frog Pond: An Application of the Theory of Relative Deprivation to Career Decisions of College Men, 72 Am. 
J. Socio. 17, 30-31 (1966)(“[T]hese ideas ... challenge the notion that getting into the ‘best possible’ school is 
the most efficient route to occupational mobility. Counselors and parents might well consider the drawbacks as 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


97 


Is it possible that Drs. Elliott. Strenta. Adair, Matier, Scott, Smyth. McArdle. Sander, and 
Bolus are nevertheless incorrect? Of course it's possible. That is why more research would 
be useful. At this point, however, the evidence is going strongly in favor of their conclusions. 
And that is important to recognize. 

The Commission has nevertheless taken a cautious approach. It is not calling upon Congress 
or state legislatures to prohibit racially-preferential admissions policies for students who 
intend to major in science or engineering. Nor is it calling on colleges and universities to 
abandon racial preferences altogether, at least not in this report. The Commission’s 
recommendation is modest. What we are asking is that college applicants be made aware of 
the potential for a mismatch effect. Students should be given the facts, so that they, in 
consultation with their parents, teachers and other advisors, can decide for themselves how to 
proceed. 1 L ' 

It is difficult to understand why Commissioners Yaki and Melendez object to disclosure. 

Next to homeownership. a college education is typically the largest investment an American 
makes during his or her lifetime. The law requires that manufacturers of breakfast cereals 
inform consumers of the ingredients and nutritional content of their products as well as warn 
of any known health hazards associated with them. Here we are simply calling for 
disclosures by the institutions themselves. Is the value of a college degree less important than 
com flakes? 

The dissenters could argue that the Commission should wait until all the evidence is in before 
they make any recommendation, even a recommendation of disclosure. 14 But in issues of 


well as the advantages of sending a boy to a 'fine' college, if. when doing so. it is fairly certain he will end up in 
the bottom ranks of his graduating class."). See also Marjorie Seaton. Herbert W. Marsh & Rhona G. Craven. 
Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect: Generalizability and Moderation: Two Sides of the Same Coin. 47 Am. Educ. Res. 
J. 390 (2010): Herbert W. Marsh. Ulrich Trautwein. Oliver Ludke. Jurgen Baumert & Olaf Roller. The Big- 
Fish-Little-Pond Effect: Persistent Negative Effects of Selective High Schools on Self-Concept After 
Graduation. 44 .Am. Educ. Res. J. 631 (2007); Herbert W. Marsh. Chit-Kwong Kong & Kit-Tai Hau, 
Longitudinal Multilevel Models of the Big Fish Little Pond Effect on Academic Self-Concept: 

Counterbalancing Contrast and Reflected Glory Effects in Hong Kong Schools, 78 J. Personality & Soc. Psych. 
337 (2000). 

113 Commissioners Yaki and Melendez are less cautious. Three years ago. in connection with the Commission’s 
Report on Affirmative Action in Law Schools, they were utterly disdainful of the mismatch theory and quite 
certain that the issue was the invention of sinister forces. They asserted ”[t]he proof that affirmative action 
works in law schools is overwhelming" and that “the success of the policy" is "unmistakable." See U.S. 
Commission on Civil Rights. Briefing Report: Affirmative Action in Law Schools. Joint Dissent of 
Commissioner Arlan D. Melendez and Commissioner Michael Yaki at 188 (2007). So certain were they that 
mismatch was not an issue in law school or anywhere else that they dissented even from the Commission's 
recommendation that more research be conducted—hardly the cautious course of action. Now they argue with 
equal certainty that "[t]his effect has been exaggerated" in the science and engineering context. This statement 
is curious given that the current evidence in the science and engineering context points in only one direction. In 
the future, it could always turn out that researchers were mistaken about the mismatch effect. Or it could turn 
out that the effect was larger or smaller than they now believe it to be. But at present there is no basis upon 
which to conclude that it "has been exaggerated.” To baldly assert otherwise is to substitute swaggering 
certitude for rational analysis. 

114 As far as I know, no one has ever made such an argument in the context of products liability. In that area, for 
example, a manufacturer can be held liable if it fails to warn of a "foreseeable" risk. See Restatement (Third) of 





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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


public policy, the evidence is never all in. Decisions must be made based on the available 
evidence, not the evidence that would exist in a perfect world. At present, the evidence that 
students intending to major in science and engineering can be worse off if they are 
mismatched is fairly strong—much stronger than the evidence that underlies most public 
policy decisions. Indeed, it is considerably stronger than the evidence that racially- 
preferential admissions policies benefit minority students in any context, science-related or 


Torts: Products Liability section 2. To exempt manufacturers from liability in cases in which the evidence of 
risk was not yet utterly conclusive would be an extraordinary (and in my view inappropriate) change of policy. 

A large proportion of the warnings on pharmaceutical products are for risks that have not yet been conclusively 
proven to exist. Science, like life, is full of uncertainties. In this case, the risk is not only foreseeable, it has 
actually been foreseen by a number of commentators of which Drs. Elliott, Strenta, Adair, Matier, Scott, Smyth, 
McArdle, Sander, and Bolus are just a few. Moreover, it is not simply foreseen, it has been tested empirically 
and strong evidence of its existence has been found in three independent studies. 

113 Interestingly, rather than discuss that evidence or indeed anything directly related to the current report, the 
dissenting commissioners prefer to discuss an earlier Commission report—one in which the issue was the effect 
of affirmative action in law schools rather than its effect on science and engineering students at the 
undergraduate level. See United States Commission on Civil Rights, Report on Affirmative Action in Law 
Schools (2007). In that report, the Commission examined research by Dr. Richard Sander that appears to show 
that mismatched law students are less likely to complete law school and pass the bar than are identically- 
credentialed students who attend law schools at which they are not mismatched. See Richard Sander, A 
Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 367 (2004). 
Commissioners Yaki and Melendez take the position that this research has been “soundly debunked in a 
sustained manner.” I can only imagine that they have not read the articles they cite. For the most part, I will rely 
on my analysis in my Commissioner’s Statement to the Report on Affirmative Action in Law Schools Report, 
since I have already dealt with most of the criticisms they cite. See also Gail Heriot, Affirmative Action in Law 
Schools, 17 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 237 (2008)(another version of same essay). 

A few points should nevertheless be made here either because they are new or in need of repetition to 
give the reader of this report a taste of the evidence examined in the earlier report: 

1. The evidence behind Sander’s conclusions in his law school study is not yet conclusive. Nor does 
the Commission report claim that it is. More research needs to be done and that is a significant part of what the 
Commission recommended. Some of the dissenting commissioners’ citations, however, are quite misplaced. For 
example, the article by David Wilkins does not dispute Sander’s conclusion that there are today fewer, rather 
than more, African-American attorneys as a result of racially preferential admissions policies. Instead, Wilkins 
argues that even assuming mismatched African-Americans leave law school or never pass the bar at higher rates 
than they would under race-neutral admissions policies, those who do make it get the benefit of having the 
opportunity to network with more elite law students. David B. Wilkins, A Systemic Response to Systemic 
Disadvantage: A Response to Sander, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 1915 (2005). 

2. The dissenting commissioners cite Katherine Y. Barnes, Is Affirmative Action Responsible for the 
Achievement Gap Between Black and White Students?, 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1759 (2007), as part of a second 
wave of criticism of the Sander study. Scholars, however, have been unable to replicate Dr. Barnes’ results. See 
Doug Williams, Does Affirmative Action Create Educational Mismatches in Law School, Draft at 9 (January, 
2010)(presented at the 20 th Annual Conference of the American Law and Economics Association). Efforts to do 
so by Williams ”produce[d] results generally consistent with the mismatch hypothesis.” Id. Indeed, Dr. Barnes’ 
own efforts to replicate her original findings have produced very different results from those in the original 
article—results that provide some support for Sander. For example, in her original article she reported that 
students in the 5 th percentile nationally for entering academic credentials passed the bar after attending a 
historically black law school at a rate of only 12.9%. Her revised is 77.9%. In a correction and update that has 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


99 


Commissioners Yaki and Melendez argue that the panel at the briefing was “stacked in favor 
of ’mismatch' proponents.'’ 11(1 Since no researcher has taken a position contrary to that of our 
witnesses, Dr. Elliott and Dr. Sander, on the issue of mismatch in science and engineering, it 
is difficult to understand who Commissioner Yaki believes should have been called as a 
witness. The Commission cannot call witnesses that do not exist. 


been submitted to the Northwestern University Law Review, she reports that her new results do indeed indicate 
that HBCUs “boost graduation and bar passage rates for students with low credentials”—although she is not yet 
willing to concede that the total pattern of results supports mismatch. Katherine Y. Barnes, Correction and 
Update to Is Affirmative Action Responsible For The Achievement Gap Between Black And White Law 
Students?, forthcoming in the Northwestern University Law Review. Dr. Bames agrees with the Commission 
that more research is necessary and that the Bar Passage Study database is not adequate for that research. 

3. The Williams article provides general support for Sander. “Although the results here are not 
conclusive,” he writes, “I find much more evidence for mismatch effects than previous research, which has been 
dismissive of the mismatch hypothesis.” Significantly, Williams goes on to explain that the Bar Passage Study, 
from which the data for Sander’s and his studies were obtained, does not categorize law schools by academic 
tier. Consequently. Williams points out. it is difficult to find evidence of mismatch even if a serious mismatch 
problem really is there. Williams urges that further studies be conducted on bar passage data from large states 
like California, Florida or Texas so that the mismatch theory in law schools can be confirmed or refuted 
Williams at 34. Williams' recommendation is thus in accord with the Commission’s. 

4. Surely all fair-minded scholars would agree that obtaining data with which to confirm or refute 
Sander’s conclusions concerning law schools is worthwhile and important. But if one were to expect those who 
critiqued the original study uniformly to be fair-minded scholars, one would be disappointed. William Kidder, 
one of the team of David Chambers, Timothy Clydesdale, William Kidder & Richard Lempert, whose critique 
of the Sander study is cited by Commissioners Yaki and Melendez in their Footnote 6, wrote to the State Bar of 
California’s Committee of Bar Examiners urging that the committee deny Sander and his co-authors access to 
the California Bar Examination data—probably the richest and best source available upon which to test the 
hypothesis further. Among other things. Kidder argue that disclosure of the data “risks stigmatizing African- 
American attorneys regardless of how successful they may be in legal practice.” Sander, of course, had not 
requested names or any information that would allow him to identify particular persons. At the time he co¬ 
authored the article cited by the dissenters, Kidder was employed as a researcher with the Equal Justice Society, 
an organization that describes its mission as to “marshal our forces to defeat the right wing assault on social and 
racial justice.” More recently, he has been employed as an administrative staff member at the University of 
California. See United States Commission on Civil Rights, Report on Affirmative Action in Law Schools, 
Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot at 148 (2007). Similarly. David Chambers was the former president of 
the Society of American Law Teachers, which also wrote a letter to the State Bar of California opposing 
scholarly access to the data. That letter raised the specter of litigation if the data is disclosed. Id. 

5. Commissioners Yaki and Melendez seem to suggest that there is something strange about the fact 
that the word “mismatch” does not appear in Dr. Sander’s most recent article. Richard H. Sander & Jane 
Yakowitz. The Secret of My Success: How Status. Prestige and School Performance Shape Legal Careers, Draft 
(August 9, 2010), available athttp://papers.ssm.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id= 1640058. The reason for this 
choice of words is easy to explain: The paper isn’t about mismatch, but rather about how law school grades 
have more impact on future success in the legal profession than the prestige of the law school a lawyer attended 
(controlling for other factors like LSAT). The study did not make a distinction between students wEo were 
mismatched and those who were not. The fact that the word “mismatch” w^as not used is thus no more 
significant than the absence of the w-ord “elephant” from the article. 

116 Dissent Statement of Yaki and Melendez at 1; Transcript at 146. 






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Encouraging Minority Students to Pursue Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Careers 


Nonetheless, extraordinary efforts were made to call either (1) any witness who had 
expressed doubts about the problem of mismatch in any context or (2) any witness who had 
expressed strong support for race-based admissions as a means of increasing the number of 
minority members in science & engineering. Among those contacted were: Gibor Basn, 
Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at the University of California at Berkeley; Ted 
Greenwood, Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Freeman A. Hrabowski III, 
President of the University of Maryland (Baltimore County); Christopher Jencks, Professor 
of Social Policy at Harvard University; Paul Joskow, President of the Alfred P. Sloan 
Foundation; Thomas Kane, Professor of Education at Harvard University; William Kidder, 
Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs, University of California; Tom 
Loveless, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute, Tom Luce, CEO 
of the National Science and Math Initiative; and Kenneth Maton, Professor of Psychology at 
the University of Maryland (Baltimore County). 

Commission staff members also invited Ann Mullen, Associate Professor of Sociology at the 
University of Toronto; Meredith Phillips, Associate Professor of Public Policy & Sociology 
at UCLA, Jesse Rothstein, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Princeton University; 
Marta Tienda, Professor of Sociology & Public Affairs at Princeton University; Philip Uri 
Treisman, Professor of Mathematics & Public Affairs at the University of Texas; and Sarah 
Turner, Professor of Economics & Education at the University of Virginia. 

All declined to testify. Of course, if Commissioners Yaki and Melendez could have 
suggested additional potential witnesses. Indeed, they were asked to by the staff—in writing 


117 My own view is that it is naive to expect the Commission staff to please all Commissioners as to “balance” 
when they invite experts to testify at a briefing. No matter how well-balanced the panel is or is not, someone 
will complain. Any procedure that places the responsibility for balance on the Commission staffs shoulders is 
thus begging for controversy. Instead, that responsibility should be on the Commissioners, each one having the 
right to call an expert witness to a briefing (if he or she feels the panel is unbalanced). That way if a panel does 
indeed fail to reflect the spectrum of responsible opinion on an issue, the Commissioners have no one to blame 
but themselves. 

Sadly, it has been observed by the Commission staff that when witnesses generally congenial to 
Commission Yaki’s point of view agree to testify, they sometimes mysteriously withdraw shortly after their 
identities are made available to the members of the Commission. Commissioner Yaki can then berate the staff 
for failing to properly balance the panel and complain that the Commission’s report is somehow illegitimate. 
Again, the solution is to alter the Commission’s procedures. If the Commissioners were responsible for 
identifying and securing witnesses, there would be no occasion for concerns of this type. 

It is well worth noting that Congress does not charge some “neutral” staff with the responsibility for 
balancing opinion at Congressional hearings. Instead, the majority chooses a number of witnesses and the 
minority is permitted to choose a somewhat smaller number. Under the circumstances, neither party can 
complain about whether the full spectrum of opinion was reflected in the panel. Instead, disagreements are 
limited to the more mundane question of whether the minority has been accorded the right to call an adequate 
number of witnesses. I would amend our procedures to conform to Congressional practice. I believe this would 
eliminate some of the controversy over panel balance that periodically rears its head at our briefings. 

I I o t 

Also contacted for advice on speakers was Peter Henderson, Director on the Board of Higher Education and 
Workforce of the National Academy of Sciences and Sigal Alon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of 
Sociology at Tel Aviv University. 




Commissioner Statements and Rebuttals 


101 


and more than once. But they did not respond with recommendations—even though there is 
no question that any such recommendations would have been followed. 

The peculiar thing about the complaint of the dissenting commissioners is that ultimately the 
panel was fairly well-balanced. Commission staff members were able to identify and secure 
the testimony of a qualified witness. Rice University Professor of Mathematics Richard 
Tapia, a long-time forceful advocate of increasing the number of minority students in science 
and engineering at highly competitive institutions. 110 Still, Commissioner Yaki at least 
appeared disappointed rather than pleased and complained of lack of balance anyway. His 
reaction when Fisk University President Hazel O'Leary (former Clinton Administration 
Secretary of Energy) abruptly cancelled her testimony on the eve of the briefing (not long 
after the identities of the witnesses were announced to the Commissioners) was equally if not 
more telling: Commissioner Yaki declared that he was “kind of glad she did” and implied 
that the Commission's calling of President O'Leary to testify on the successes of HBCUs in 
graduating African-American science and engineering majors was somehow inappropriate. 1-0 

Finally, the objections of Commissioners Yaki & Melendez to what they regard as the “non- 
deliberative manner by which Findings and Recommendations were drafted” are surprising. 
In fact, what they are objecting to is the deliberative character of our negotiations rather than 
their non-deliberative character. The Commission members who make up the majority that 
adopted these findings and recommendations take them seriously. We are not potted plants. 
We do not show up once a month to sign on the dotted line where staff members tell us to, 
and then collect a stipend and a free lunch. We sometimes have been negotiating with each 
other over the language of the findings and recommendations in a report long prior to their 
adoption. But given that all of us have full-time jobs and most of us must travel distances to 
get to our meetings, these negotiations take a while. Sometimes changes are still being 
suggested both shortly before a meeting and during the meeting. If Commissioners Yaki and 
Melendez would like to take part in those negotiations, they w r ould certainly be welcome to, 
but thus far they have shown no desire to do so. To the contrary. Commissioner Yaki has 
declared the opposite intention in an open meeting, “I will not be a party,” he said to 
Chairman Reynolds, “to contributing to your ability to get things done." 1-1 In any event, the 
Chairman has always been willing to postpone consideration of findings and 
recommendations when Commissioners Yaki or Melendez have requested such a delay, so it 
is difficult to understand what motivates their argument. 

Part of the reason Commission members must spend a good deal of time hammering out 
findings and recommendations lies in the Commission's ill-considered procedures. The staff 


119 According to the magazine Science. Dr. Tapia's graduate program in mathematics at Rice University has 
graduated far greater than the average number of underrepresented minorities than is the national average, 
causing the National Research Council to cite his program's success in one of its reports. Paul Selvin, Math 
Education: Multiplying the Meager Numbers, 258 Science 1200, 1201 (November 13, 1992). 

120 STEM Testimony at 146. 

121 Meeting of November 20, 2009, Transcript at 8-9. See Rebuttal Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot to 
Report on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (issued in conjunction with this report) at n.l 
(cataloguing occasions upon which Commissioner Yaki has walked out of ordinary business meetings to defeat 
a quorum or joined a meeting only when a quorum is already established.) 





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members who are assigned to write the first draft of them seldom get as much time as I 
would like to confer with Commission members about the kinds of recommendations those 
Commission members want to make. In part this is a result of poorly-designed internal 
procedures, which deliberately isolate them from the Commission. Sometimes staff members 
end up making guesses about what the Commission’s majority wants, and sometimes those 
guesses turn out to be incorrect. They learn. Ultimately, however, it is for the Commissioners 
and not for the staff members to issue the reports. That is what it means to be the 
Commissioners instead of the staff. As the statute that chartered the Commission makes 
clear, the Commission is made up of the eight Commissioners; it is not made up of the 
staff. " The findings and recommendations of Commission reports must reflect that. 


122 See 42 U.S.C. 1975(b): “The Commission shall be composed of eight members.” The subsection then goes 
on to describe how members of the Commission will be appointed by the President and Congress. But it is silent 
on the subject of staff. 


GJQ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 2010-366-314 

















































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